87.3 % of all stats are made up on the spot

Duke University has had a rough year or so. Their vaunted basketball team lost in the first round (woo-hoo!), their Lacrosse team engaged in conduct they were not supposed to, lost their season, were accused of even worse conduct that the accusations could never have been leveled in the first place had they not been misbehaving in the first place, and now there is a cheating scandal in the business section.

Now, perhaps it is just because, outside of Spanish, school came easily to me but cheating was something I never even conceived of doing. (Or perhaps it was because I had involved parents who made sure I had a strong moral system and would no more conceive of cheating than I would stealing or killing or other such anti-social behavior). Nor did I ever bother trying to figure out how I could cheat if I wished.

Yet Bloomberg would have us believe that 68% of people in college cheat.

I have a very, vey difficult time believing that. Out of 9 other people I was in class with, 7 of them were cheating? There were only 2 other honest people? I would be very interested to know how the questions were phrased to get such an exorbitant number.

So let's go on a bit of a tangent for a moment. I have recently been wading through Seriously Funny, a series of biopics on the "rebellious comedians" of the 50s and 60s...Mort Sahl, Lenny Bruce, the Smothers Brothers (?!?), Dick Gregory, and many others. It argues their satire, profanity, and so forth moved society forward. Again and again their desire to "question authority" and rail against the establishment are praised.

No small shock is it then that the children of people who thought tearing away the fabric of society, destroying social mores and value systems, looking askance at any and all authority, declaring "do your own thing" or "do what feels right", to "drop out", to redefine what is valuable in society, and other rebellious attitudes and methods are somehow finding their way clear to live dishonestly, self-centeredly, and in ways that destroy many of the values this nation was founded on.

To this day I do not understand the reverance many people feel for the hippy movement, for some of the drug-praising elements that were revitalized during those years, or for many of the attitudes they praised so highly. What is so wonderful about making other people work harder so you don't have to? Of living filthy, underachieving lives? Of getting bombed out of your mind to where you become a paranoid delusionist? I fail to see any positives that came out of the hippie or drug cultures. I do see a lot of damage...including enhanced willingness to cheat, to sponge off others, to mindlessly criticize authority not because of wrong it has done but because it is authority...which, by the way, lessens the impact those of us complaining about legitimate abuses of authority can possibly have or changes we might otherwise be able to initiate.

Maybe 68% of students do cheat. Whatever the percentage, it is too high and one more fallout of the abuses of the 60s.