Article December 1, 2003 Issue

Inclined to honesty

By Margaret Rogers

LAST MONTH A HIGH-SCHOOL football player from Springfield, Illinois, set a new career passing record of more than 5,000 yards. But the Southeast High quarterback asked that his name be removed from the record book because he felt he hadn't earned it.

It turns out that in the last minute of a game that Southeast's Spartans were losing 36-20, the coaches of the competing teams struck a deal: The winning team would get one more touchdown, and the Spartans' Nate Haasis would get to complete a pass that would break the previous record. When he learned what had happened, Haasis said no thanks to the honor. As he explained to National Public Radio's Robert Siegel, it wasn't fair to the current holder of the record, who had worked hard to get it.

In a week when fraud in the mutual-fund industry elbowed reports about corruption in sports, government, and the media from news headlines, it was a refreshing story. While honesty is undoubtedly much more common than the dishonesty that gets so much press, incidents like this raise the question of what inclines people to one or the other.