My alma mater has an honor code that is respected throughout the university. Freshmen pledge to do their own academic work with integrity and to report those who do not to the student-run honor council.

Student signatures remain on display in the lobby of the Sarratt Student Center throughout their four years at the university. Alongside the signatures is found not only a statement of the honor code itself, but also the often-quoted words of the man for whom the building is named. Madison Sarratt, long-time dean of men at Vanderbilt University and a teacher in the mathematics department, died in 1978. He wrote:

Today I am going to give you two examinations, one in trigonometry and one in honesty. I hope you will pass them both, but if you must fail one, let it be trigonometry, for there are many good [people] in this world today who cannot pass an examination in trigonometry, but there are no good [people] in the world who cannot pass an examination in honesty.

Former students of Sarratt's still speak of the effect those words have had on their adult lives.