– A legal security problem – VG

– I think it is a legal security problem that a sentence is implemented before the appeal has been processed, says lawyer Halfdan Mellbye.

When a student is caught cheating by the local appeals board at the campus, they are banned on the day. This applies even if they choose to appeal or appeal the case to the Joint Appeals Board.

Mellbye, who has had several hundred cases with students caught cheating, believes that the regulations are too strict.

– My opinion is that the threshold is too low to call any cheating, he says, and adds:

– In general, I would say that students are too often banned for trivial matters where it should be considered to cancel the exam.

Last week, VG and several media covered the case of the nursing student who was banned from the study, after plagiarizing himself on the exam and for having had the wrong source reference to a school exam that was turned into a home exam due to the pandemic.

Also read: Researcher on cheating case: – An assault on a young student

What has surprised Mellbye most in the cheating cases he has had is that the students who come to him have such good cases.

– In most cases I have had, it is obvious what has actually happened, and that there are accidents, small mistakes and trivial things. I have not had a single case where I have not thought that it is not sufficient to just cancel the exam, he emphasizes.

He experiences that the institutions want all cheating cases to be the same.

– But it is not so. They are individual, and there are often explanations for what has happened. But they rarely care – in my experience.

Seems the reaction is severe

One who has also reacted to the case is Professor Emeritus in Pedagogy Karl Øyvind Jordell. He tells VG that the first thing he reacted to was the severe punitive reaction.

Then he became aware of a quote in Agderposten from the nursing student’s former lawyer Estin Blessom:

– A complaint she had submitted now might have been processed in November. For those who are banned for one semester, there is no point in doing so, and for those who are banned for two semesters, it may have little to say.

– Then I really reacted, says Jordell, and adds:

– It sounds like a lack of legal certainty in the system if you do not get the case processed before it is too late, and you have to do something about it.

Jordell points out that increased use of home exams, as has been the case during the pandemic, will lead to more cases that can be perceived as cheating.

– In such situations, you must have an apparatus that is able to take away the cases before the start of the semester. It can not be the case that the students do not appeal because there is no point due to the long processing time.

Difference from place to place

Jordell points out that there may also be differences in how cases are handled from institution to institution. In a letter about source use from UiO, it says:

“It can also be considered cheating or attempted cheating to use one’s own previous work without disclosing it.”

– It is interesting that the University of Oslo puts it this way, that it can is considered cheating, while the rules at the University of Agder seem to be more absolute. If you formulate it the way UiO does, you are freer to exercise judgment, says Jordell.

On UiA’s website it states that quoting or otherwise using one’s own previous examination work without sufficient source references is considered cheating.

Furthermore, it says that it can cause the exam to be canceled, that you are banned from the university for up to two semesters, and that you lose the right to sit for exams at all Norwegian universities and colleges during the exclusion period.

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