A private college in the Indian state of Karnataka has sparked
controversy after photos of its students wearing cardboard boxes during a
chemistry exam went viral on social media.
After photos of the students wearing cardboard boxes on their heads
to prevent cheating started doing the rounds online, regional officials
in Karnataka rushed to Bhagat Pre-University College to complain about
the “inhumane” treatment of students. Different version of the story
started circulating online, including one that claimed the college only
turned to cardboard boxes after having repeatedly caught students
cheating, despite multiple warnings.
“This is totally unacceptable. Nobody has any right to treat anybody
more so students like animals. This perversion will be dealt with
aptly,” state Education Minister, S Suresh Kumar, declared.
“We have clearly told the management to give a written explanation
and if this kind of incident is repeated in the future, the department
will cancel the license of the school,” Deputy Director of Public
Instruction Department, SS Piraje, said. “We will take strong actions
against the college after the completion of the inquiry. We have already
served a notice to the college and are waiting for the reply by the
institutions. Once received, we will proceed with our inquiry.”
In their defense, Bhagat Pre-University College officials admitted to
having made the students wear cardboard boxes on their heads, but added
that the students had given their consent and had even brought their
own boxes.
“They said they were comfortable with the trial, the college did not
harass any student, it was optional and some students experimented, some
did not,” principal MB Satish told reporters.
“Our measures are for the betterment of students. We don’t want
students to get diverted at the time of taking examinations. The
measures were taken as an experiment, and we received both positive and
negative feedback.”
To convince everyone that the whole thing was a voluntary experiment,
the college principal indicated that some of the students in the
photographs weren’t wearing boxes on their heads, asking that some
others removed them as well after a few minutes, and that the faculty
asked all the students to take off the anti-cheating accessories after
an hour.
Bhagat Pre-University College also explained that they only went
ahead with the bizarre experiment after seeing it used in the Indian
state of Bihar, where it was commended as ingenious. Unfortunately, in
its case the feedback was not positive at all.
Interestingly, this same method was used just last month at a high-school in Mexico, and the feedback was not much better.
