During my lengthy career as a U of T undergrad, I honed my ability to develop a thesis and write about it in an organized way. Though at some point in my essay-writing career-early in my second year, I believe-I really became full of shit. This is my fault, of course, but I always found it strange that such a development could be rewarded by the one institution in my life touted as being in the business of truth.
A protocol exists right now at U of T to adequately ensure students do not include false information in their papers. There are strict requirements for citing things from definitive sources. Students are given the choice between ensuring they get their facts right and losing marks for doing otherwise. The decision for most students is a simple one. Societal norms are commensurate with this way of doing things-nowhere is it acceptable to pass off others’ work as your own, or to lie in this way.
Other sorts of dishonesty, though, are less despised in our society. While liars are condemned for having failed to meet a minimum requirement of being good, someone disingenuous is often empathized with, as though they failed only to exceed the expectation. We shake our heads laughing at how obviously insincere those competing for political office are, but we approve enough to grant them our complacency, if not our support. We have measures to ensure that the billboards moving on buses and thirty-second messages playing on television don’t state anything factually untrue, but a certain quotient of bullshit from them is expected and condoned. These examples are so common that they’re trite here, and neither comes from the fringes. At U of T, the norm is no different.
In my experience as an Arts and Science undergrad, I can only remember perceiving indifference from instructors over whether or not I was true to my beliefs in any given paper. Perhaps I am less principled than the average student, but before too long I became indifferent myself.
The first time I argued something that I believed was wrong was in a politics paper. I remember it because it felt weird. I hadn’t done it in high school or in my first year of university. But this decision, like the one to include only true information, was a simple one. One person was going to read it and mark it and forget about it. If I got a good mark, I succeeded; if not, then I didn’t. In this bare equation, which all U of T students face, the plainest solution was to go see what’s written, figure out what pieces fit together the tidiest, and type that up. What else was there to consider? A principle? As I continued writing essays, I became more concerned with the kind of good that actually exists. I wanted the good mark.
I do not mean to deny responsibility for my own choices, or to doubt that we are all capable of differentiating instances when our conviction is of consequence and when it is not. On or off a university campus, we decide for ourselves what we want to do with our words, with our abilities to organize them and to assert things. It was during my time writing essays at U of T, though, that the precedent was set-the precedent to ignore my own beliefs once in a while, whenever convenient and beneficial.
U of T’s orthodox university practices, coldly indifferent to sincerity, are parallel to the lack of integrity we gently disdain in our marketplace and in our democracy. How troubling this is depends only on how much of an impact one believes four years at a school like this one can have on each generation of great minds.
After five years of writing essays at U of T, Jared Moore resides in San Francisco and is editor of the journal Crumbs.
