<p>Burden of proof pertains only to the courts. I don't see how it applies in college disciplinary hearings. They can make it up as they go along. Harvey Silverglate (a lawyer) has had some good articles on this over the years, see:</p>
<p>While it is an obvious surmise that the dean may want to speak to the student as a reality check, may grasp before or during the conversation that something is awry and may have the ability to halt a disciplinary process....... that does not make it any less of a farce to conceive of the meeting as a friendly one. A gun is pointed at the student, and some discussion is happening around that. One of the gunholders might decide to intervene with the other mafiosi to remove the gun. Then again, he might not.</p>
<p>The trouble with discussing it casually with the dean is that, for whatever reason, the conclusion can also be that the student fits the profile of a cheater, that the student's answers don't address all the professor's concerns (not that the student would necessarily grasp what those are before they are put in writing), or that there is a lawyer in the background and in order to play it safe the process should proceed as scheduled.</p>
<p>re: exams, the professor erred, whether the exams were graded or not. Your teaching experience may be vast or not, but the policy at every university where I have taught makes it inadvisable for final exams to be left out for collection. In theory this is true not only for the final exams, but in practice the finals are all that matter and midterms etc are handled ad lib. I will grant that policies are sometimes honored in the breach, but in this case there probably is a policy that the professor violated, and that would help the student's side of the case.</p>
<p>My S at Harvard has received emails from TFs telling students to pick up their exams outside their offices. The college where I saw piles of bluebooks with grades (including breakdown by sections) was a different one.
As for discussion with a Dean of students, it is useful to know what the procedures are, and what exactly the student is being accused of. I, for one, am not very clear, from reading the OP, as I said in my first post.
While I agree that a university honors council is very different from a court of law, and a lawyer may not be admitted to the proceedings, a student needs to go in with as much knowledge of procedures and of the allegations. The student can then discuss these with a lawyer and come up with a strategy and a line of behavior. Bursting into tears and becoming incoherent, for example, will probably not help. It takes some practice not to lose one's cool.</p>
<p>wow this is so horrible...im sorry...whAt you should do is when you talk to them, dont start out accusing them, but approach it more friendly...if they do not submit to this, then take an accusatory tone. good luck</p>
<p>As a side note, colleges need to enter the 21st century. Immediately after an exam, bluebooks should be scanned so there can be no dispute about their contents. And in case they get lost.</p>
<p>Important documents should not be left, uncopied, in an unsecure location.</p>
<p>More exam trivia below, but it illustrates why the professor in
this case has probably violated university policy.</p>
<p>
[quote]
My S at Harvard has received emails from TFs telling students to pick up their exams outside their offices.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Harvard's policy is one of those that I had in mind, and it is quite clear on this point: student work, finals and term papers in particular, must be retained for at least a year after the course is over. After that time the instructor or, if applicable, the department that offered the course, has the option to discard the material whenever they wish. Until then, it is their responsibility to maintain jurisdiction over the material for up to a year, so that students can collect their work.</p>
<p>This makes it inadvisable for a professor to allow exams to be left in unsecure open locations. What you observed is the official policy being honored in the breach, as I mentioned, which is something that is most typically done by foreign TFs who are less aware of the perils of American bureaucracy. Of course, the professors are often foreigners themselves, so not necessarily attuned to notice this problem or police the TFs. The more senior people are pretty well aware of this issue, regardless of their background.</p>
<p>
[quote]
My S at Harvard has received emails from TFs telling students to pick up their exams outside their offices.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>Unless they have waited a year before sending those emails, it appears that your son's instructors are not following the established policy in the faculty handbook (if the exams in question were originals of final exams):</p>
<p>
[quote]
Examination booklets should be kept for one year after the end of the course.</p>
<h1>Most instructors return exam booklets, papers, and other academic work to the student enrolled in their courses. By law, students have the right to review all materials submitted to a course, including final examination booklets and, for a reasonable charge, may have copies of any originals not returned to them.
<p>In any case, leaving graded work (originals or copies) unattended in a hallway appears to me to be a violation of FERPA.</p>
<p>(Google on a combination of search teams like "graded exams FERPA unattended hallway" and you will see that faculty handbooks at many colleges explicitly state that leaving graded work unattended in a hallway violates FERPA.)</p>
<p>As I said, some TFs or profs seem to be leave exams outside their offices for about a week, then take them back to their office and store them for a year.<br>
In other cases, exams are stored immediately in a departmental office. I am not sure what measures are taken to ensure that a student takes only or looks only at the exam/paper belonging to him or her. At the college I visited, the bluebooks were in a departmental office that was closed for the day, but so clearly visible through the glass that I could make out the name of the student and the grade the student had gotten for the final, etc...
By the way, Siserune, the TFs who emailed my S do not seem to have been foreigners.</p>
<p>All this, however, brings up the issue that the prof clearly violated correct procedures if he thinks he has grounds for alleging that the student altered her own exam after the fact.</p>
<p>Another section of Harvard's faculty handbook states:</p>
<p>
[quote]
It is the Faculty's legal responsibility to maintain confidentiality of student grades and also of materials upon which evaluations are made. For this reason, instructors should not post grades by student name or student identification number. Furthermore, instructors should never make a student's submitted work, such as problem sets, exam booklets, or papers, accessible to anyone other than the student who has submitted it, unless specifically authorized to do so by the author.
<p>I assume the stated exception "unless specifically authorized to do so by the author" is meant to apply to situations in which students have turned in especially outstanding work and the instructor has requested the student's specific permission to share that exemplary work as a model for emulation by others.</p>
<p>Again, it seems your son's instructors should read and adhere to the faculty handbook.</p>
[quote]
I recieved an email from the Honor Council telling me that I am suspected of changing the exam and that I must appear at an official hearing. From what I'm told, the professor had left the exams outside of the psychology building's main office, and he thinks that I took my exam, altered it, and then put in back in the pile.
[/quote]
Acinva:
[quote]
If the teacher suspected you of cheating, why would he not have failed you on the final exam? If you got a 73 on the exam, it hardly looks as though you cheated. If you did cheat, wouldn't your grade have been much better than that? Something doesn't make sense here.
[/quote]
I agree with Acinva. This doesn't ring true. "From what I'm told"? "He thinks"? The OP should get a specific statement of whatever it is she is accused of having done, and prepare to address those specific accusations with facts. Speculation isn't helpful at this point.</p>
<p>1coolnerd-
How awful! I am sorry this has happened to you. I don't know where you go to school, but my s. happens to serveas one of the justices on the honor court at his university. I can ask him how procedures work there, if that would help. I would encourage you to look on the website of your college/university to see if they give any information about the Honor Court procedures. Keep us posted!</p>
<p>IF you do not stand for yourself now, no one else will. Stand tall, stand strong and go down fighting for your reputation and your integrity. Gather evidence....establish an alibi from the moment you turned in the exam until whenever you left campus. Go back and think hard on this. Also evidence of your preparations for the exam such as outlines, extra readings, study groups etc. </p>
<p>The truth is your integrity and reputation have already been soiled. Go in strong to establish it and then in the end demand a formal apology from the professor for his actions. He should have talked to you. I do wonder if others were accused....and i wonder if in those basic classes if they know one frosh from another.</p>
<p>
[quote]
The more senior people are pretty well aware of this issue, regardless of their background.
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I don't think this is always true.</p>
<p>The Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA a.k.a. the Buckley Amendment) went into effect in the mid 1970s, but government enforcement was notably "toothless" and many colleges were quite lax in their responsibility to ensure privacy until a few years ago.</p>
<p>The reason for recent heightened FERPA awareness is that, since 2003, colleges have been considered "financial institutions" for the privacy of information purposes of the Gramm-Leach-Billey Act (GLB). GLB was meant to protect consumers from identity theft, etc.</p>
<p>A college that can demonstrate FERPA compliant policies will also be safe from GLB penalties. Because GLB penalties are much greater than the original FERPA penalties, most colleges have subjected their written privacy policies to very careful scrutiny in recent years, have updated faculty handbooks, etc.</p>
<p>Instructors typically pay careful attention to such documents when they start a new job, but more senior faculty may not carefully reread the most recent versions of the handbook each year.</p>
<p>To the original poster, I just wanted to add that I've been going into all this detail about college privacy rights to make very clear that your professor was very much in the wrong to leave the exams unattended and put you in this very unfortunate and vulnerable position.</p>
<p>Since you worked very hard to prepare for the exam, it is particularly sad and very irresponsible that your professor did not treat your exam with due respect for your privacy and integrity.</p>
<p>By the same token, though, the prof cannot allege that the OP was the one who altered the exam. Where's the proof?</p>
<p>I, too, wondered about the 73. This is why the story seems unclear to me. Who in his right mind would alter an exam so as to raise his grade to a 73?</p>
<p>
[quote]
I, too, wondered about the 73. This is why the story seems unclear to me. Who in his right mind would alter an exam so as to raise his grade to a 73?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>I gather that the professor is accusing the student of altering his exam book after receiving a 73 on the exam and resubmitting it.</p>
<p>I had one professor who would photocopy peoples' bluebooks but not tell them about it. A trap for cheaters.</p>
<p>Indeed, that seems the most likely scenario as far as the allegation was concerned. But the prof would need to prove not only that the bluebook had been altered but also that the student in question altered the bluebook.</p>
<p>Am I the only one who thinks this is a bizarre charge? Most people cheat during the test, to get a better grade. Is it that common to cheat AFTER the test? Marite, what's your experience?</p>
<p>
[quote]
Am I the only one who thinks this is a bizarre charge? Most people cheat during the test, to get a better grade. Is it that common to cheat AFTER the test? Marite, what's your experience?
[/quote]
</p>
<p>This question isn't directed at me, but in my experience it's a method of cheating that happens regularly. I've had professors that insisted exams be written in ink for this reason. Also, as I mentioned, I had one teacher who photocopied the bluebooks before returning them.</p>
<p>No experience at all! This is the weirdest story I've heard.</p>
<p>I have to assume that this was a MC kind of test, where it would not be difficult to bubble different answers or alter letter answers, rather than an essay test.
But, let's say a student did alter the test. First, the student would have to know which were the correct answers (why not on the day of the test?), and would have time to have altered the test after receiving the grade, then taken it to the prof for re-grading. The prof would have to have pretty incontrovertible proof that the exam had been altered (erasure marks in and of themselves prove nothing as they could have been made during the test. How long was it between the time the exams were left outside the prof's door and the student queried the grade? </p>
<p>One poster mentioned that a prof was in the habit of copying bluebooks to trap cheaters, so the practice of altering bluebooks may exist. I have to say this is the first I've heard of it. I also have to wonder how large the class was and how much of the blue book was filled. Copying hundreds of bluebooks would be quite a chore!
Cross-posted with lskinner. I seem to live in a different universe!</p>