Quote:
Originally Posted by SandraM
Today during my exam, I was accused of cheating by an invigilator with a girl beside me. And I don't know whats going to happen?....The girl kept asking for the prof and he never showed up s the girl started talking to herself and cursing the prof. I started to laugh and then was approached by the invigilator saying that we were cheating. I'm sooo confused and stressed on what is going to happen? I know i didn't cheat, and I dont know what to do :(
Any advice would be helpful.
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You shouldn't stress too much about it as long as you were allowed to finish writing your test. At this point, the invigilator just saying you were cheating is a baseless accusation without actual evidence (hence why they let you continue writing). Saying you were cheating was likely more of a scare tactic to ensure you were on your best behaviour for the rest of the exam. I had a few incidents as a TA (not at McMaster) where I was 99.9% certain I saw people try to cheat off neighbours in final exams, but nothing ever stuck as the burden of proof for such a charge is quite high. All I could generally do as an invigilator was to place myself in the general vicinity of the suspect student to discourage further potential cheating.
I would recommend that you write down as many details about the incident on physical paper (like in a bound notebook) before you forget them. Important things to note are descriptions of the people around you (so they could be later called as witnesses), the series of events and the actual time they occurred. If the department does bring forward a case of Academic Dishonesty against you, there is a guide to the process here:
http://www.mcmaster.ca/academicinteg...d/accused.html
If it does get that far (and I really doubt it would from your description), then you can contact the and meet with the Ombuds office for advice. Their website is here:
http://www.mcmaster.ca/ombuds/
In short, don't sweat it unless you actually hear something from the instructor. If you're really concerned, you could be proactive and contact the instructor and ensure there isn't a complaint against you.
As a side note, if you feel you were unfairly accused by the invigilator you should also bring up that issue with the department / ombuds. I know at other Universities where I have invigilated it was absolutely made clear that you could NOT just accuse a student of cheating during an exam even if you suspected it; you need actual evidence to make an accusation and there's a proper process to follow. Falsely accusing a student potentially leads to liability for the University as it could be argued that the false accusation affected the accused student's performance on the exam.
