50 students at Ghent University have received an email from a lecturer telling them that the papers to an exam they sat recently have been lost. It is likely that the paper mistakenly ended up with wastepaper that has been taken away for recycling. The students have now been given the choice of resitting the exam or keeping the points they gained in a teamwork exercise they did earlier this academic year.
Ghent
Ghent University loses 50 completed exam papers
Published:
The exams papers that were lost were social marketing exams sat by students of the university’s undergraduate course in communication science. In an email sent to the affected students their lecturer wrote “The copies can no longer be found on my desk. The exams had already been marked, but the marks had not yet been recorded".
"The most logical explaination is that an overzealous cleaner took the exam papers believing that they could go with the wastepaper” the unversity’s Stephanie Lenoir told VRT News. Fortunately, a solution has been found and the students are being given the option of using the points they gained from a previous groupwork exercise as their final result for the social marketing course.
"Those that want to try and get a better score that what was given for the groupwork exercise can also resit the exam”, Ms Lenoir said.
"Revised for 8 days"
Several students have already reacted to the loss of their exam papers. Ms Lenoir told VRT News that “Quite a lot of students have displayed understanding for what has happened even though of course it isn’t nice for them”.
One of the affected students told VRT News that "I had spent 8 days revising for the exam. So, I was shocked when I read the mail. But I don’t feel too bad about. I couldn’t really tell how the exam went it was going to be a close call. We had also put a lot of work into the group exercise. We got 15 out of 20 and I am happy with that”.