ABSTRACT
I once briefly borrowed a student’s pen, idly commenting that it wrote very well. The next day, the student returned to my office and gave me two similar pens as a gift – “not a bribe,” she said. At first I demurred, saying that I couldn’t accept the pens, but eventually I acceded to her offer, perhaps not very graciously – and the pens really did write very nicely! Was this a corrupt act on my part? The student was not taking a class with me, but I was shortly to be among those responsible for evaluating her master’s thesis, and I recognized at the time that I may have been called upon to write letters of recommendation for her when she applied for jobs.
