Apparently in the revelry following the New Zealand All Blacks win in the Rugby World Cup, some overly excited student at Auckland based Avondale College circulated a hoax letter describing a new cheating deterrent. Deterrence is a big deal for us academic integrity folks. It’s like a no-harm/no-foul pre-emptive strike where everyone can test happily. We use this quite a bit employing psychological effects into our user interface to deter cheating. But the kind of deterrence we use is a world apart from the letter in question.
Mandatory Butt-Cheek and Body Inspections. Stop-and-frisk is going to a whole new level down under. Can we use “down under” for New Zealand, or is that only or Australia? The fake letter claims that students are inscribing notes on their gluteal maximii and going to the bathroom during tests to scope out the cheats. Therefore the new regulations will enforce a whole new kind of proctology-proctoring including mirrors in bathrooms and physical inspections.
Again, this is a hoax; at least in the land of the Kiwis.
Not too long ago we reported in a This Week in Cheating segment that a school in England forced students to take proctors with them to the bathroom. Meaning if you had to go potty during an exam, a proctor was coming with you. The administration mandated this after students were going to the bathroom and looking up answers on their smartphones.
What is it with people under British Constitutional Monarchy?
And for another thing, they call proctors “invigilators”. Could you imagine if this company was called InvigilatorFree? Another win for the USA!
Let’s take a step back and commend the Kiwi kids on this hoax. “The best satire is indistinguishable from reality” as the saying goes. And they nailed it. The trope of cheating and cheaters pushing acceptable limits is consistent across the globe. But how you deter or detect cheating, well that falls within the cultural boundaries.
That’s it for This Week in Cheating – hang in there friends of academic integrity!
