Teachers fall for students' plea, land in soup

Being considerate to the emotional appeals of students in their examination answer scripts proved costly to Bangalore University two lecturers as they are likely to be debarred from evaluation work for three years.

Picking up answer scripts of various undergraduate courses randomly for scrutiny, the evaluation controllers were in a shock when they saw that despite students writing ‘banned literature’ in their scripts, were given passing marks.

Lecturers of two different colleges awarded marks to students who had written nothing but names of gods and emotional letters to evaluators, pleading to be passed in the exam.

“It is perhaps for the first time in the BU history that we caught two faculty members awarding marks to students despite scribbling such banned content. We have already served them notices, and they will be barred from any evaluation work for the next three years,” said Prof C Shivaraju, Registrar (Evaluation), Bangalore University.

One student wrote: “Dear sir/Madam, U may be going through my paper and found nothing. Please give me passing marks and help me clear the course, or else my parents will force me to get married.”

Yet another student explained his ordeal that he was unable to prepare for the exams as he did not have money to go for tuition and had to work parttime to look after his mother and sister.

According to the BU examination ordinance, such writing in answer sheets is banned and amounts to malpractice with stringent punishment to both the students and teachers.

“In some of the papers, students even wrote their mobile numbers and offered to pay the bribe. Being teachers, we should be ethical and should not fall prey to such gimmicks by students,” explained a faculty member, who has been taking part in evaluation work for the past 11 years.

Keeping in mind such incidents, the BU has decided to issue general circular warning teachers against such practices and urging them to comply with the examination ordinance.