A nursing school in Bihar state, in Muzaffarpur district in India, has caused an outrage across the nation, after teachers were caught on camera cutting the sleeves off of women with a razor blade before they could sit down to write their paramedical exams. Many of the women were banned from taking the exam unless they had it cut off or wore the appropriate attire. The reason behind such a bizarre act was to prevent students from cheating during the exam, and therefore, the staffs of the school took this drastic step in order to not allow anyone to be caught with anything up their sleeves.
An embarrassing and humiliating act for the women who had their sleeves cut off in full public view and were later seen carrying their cut-off sleeves into the exam hall. It has caused an outrage on social media and has caused protest outside other exam halls, where parents and the locals are demanding an answer from the education board.
The school has been banned from conducting any further exam sessions and the education department in conducting further inquiry to find out which officials were responsible. There has been report that the school district had sent out a notice to students beforehand, demanding them to not show up in the exam in long sleeves.
There is an abundance of headlines of mass cheating taking place during exams periods. Bihar has faced many of these cases where they expelled over 1000 students in February for cheating on their 12th-grade exams, which then led to banning socks and shoes inside the exam hall. In February 2016, a strange choice was made to avert students from cheating which led army candidates to take their exams on recruitment day, in their underwear.
As a student, if I were to face such a humiliating act, I would’ve been outraged. Indeed, cheating is not inevitable, but there are always other means to help avert such situation to arise if strict regulations and functions are put into place. Personally, whenever I’m in an exam hall, there are two assigned invigilators in the hall who keep a close eye on each one of us. There’s a system put in place to prevent students from teaching. If a school has a high rate of cheating cases during the exams, then the proper measure would be to install a surveillance camera or hire more invigilator, and make sure that one is bringing their items to write the exams are put in a plastic bag. To take such strange action which only publicly embarrasses a person is wrong.
