Kevin Schoenfeldt (3L)
Today, a student whom we cannot name has reached out to UV to refuse to confirm or deny whether they have started a take-home exam. “I’ll tell you one thing,” the student told us, “let’s just say I have started a take-home exam in the last hour, I definitely wouldn’t be allowed to tell you that the exam was just absolute, certified nonsense.”
The student went on: “But just for the sake of argument, do you know what really, like, grinds my gears?” the student asked us. “When you study for an exam, download it from Examsoft and open it up and just have like zero clue what the questions are asking, and if it weren’t for the fact that it was open book and open internet you’d almost definitely fail the class, because—and I’m just talking figuratively, of course—in a full semester of classes, the professor somehow neglected to teach you what that figurative professor thought you should know for this hypothetical class that is in no way an actual class that I did or did not recently start a take-home exam for and about which I certainly will not comment to say I thought was or was not total fucking bullshit. So to speak.”
The student may have taken great risk by choosing to reach out to us. U of T Law’s take-home exam policy says that “students must not share the exam with any other person or discuss the exam in any other way. This includes whether or not they have written the examination, discussions about the question itself, or any of the instructions.” (Emphasis Added).
We turned to Socrates Polychoix, a researcher at the National Institute for Exam-Writing Policies to help us interpret the policy. “If I’m reading the policy correctly, a student isn’t allowed to admit they are writing a take-home exam, or maybe even reveal that they’re in a class that uses a take-home exam,” Polychoix explained.
When we asked a member of the school’s administration for clarification on this policy, informing them that a student may have indirectly revealed to us that they had a take-home exam that they may or may not have started, the administrator said, “it’s not clear whether this is a violation of the policy. Hypothetically speaking you could just tell us who that student is and we could look into the matter.” To which we responded, “hypothetically speaking, you could go fu—” and then remembered who we were talking to. It is UV policy not to reveal sources.
We emailed the student with some follow up questions, to which they responded:
“Did I leave class early regularly? Sure, why do you ask? Did I spend the entirety of one class Tweeting at Playboi Carti? So what? Is it too much to ask for a follow back? Anyway, that’s all I have to say. I may or may not be about to submit a take-home exam that I might be submitting without having read over. They don’t call it [redacted]LOL for nothing, am I right?”
We will update this story as more information becomes available. If you have any information for us on this matter that you can neither confirm nor deny, do not hesitate to email us at [email protected]. We will ensure that any information given is kept confidential.
