Be forewarned: this one is kind of…ranty.
< rant >
A student was kicked out of the university today. Now this student is not one of my favorite people in the world. The first day I was on campus he came up to me and said, “Madame. I want to be your baby boy. Let me be your baby boy.” So he’s slightly obnoxious and completely full of himself. On the other hand, he’s a hard worker, he speaks English very well, he’s eloquent, dynamic and when he wants to do something he just goes out and does it. I think he has huge potential. It’s his gumption that got him in trouble today.
He took the administrative stamp off the desk of Father V and used it to stamp a letter so he could apply for internships and jobs this summer.
I don’t know if I’ve detailed the importance of stamps in Cameroon, but you basically need a stamp on anything that is official. It ranges from business letters to receipts, and even invitations. Every time I’ve been invited to an event the door guard always looks for the stamp both on the invitation and the envelope. It was awkward when I had doodled all over the envelope the first time I’d been invited to an event like that and the guard gave me this “how COULD you have drawn all over an important document” look. I’m still of the opinion the giraffe wearing the sweater eating lots of hearts needed to be drawn on that specific envelope.
What the student did was serious, but most of the professors are feeling a bit mal a l’aise about the entire situation. The student is in his third year, he’s almost finished with school. He also had been coming around the administrative offices for weeks and weeks trying to get this stamp through legal means (which leads to a whole other discussion on Cameroonian bureaucracy that I don’t even want to get into right now). I am of the opinion that this infraction is similar to people cheating on tests—but no one has been expelled from the university for cheating (and they even caught a lady yesterday).
Cheating is an interesting business, especially on tests. Philo was describing to me how people training to be infermières cheat on their tests. (HEALTH CARE PROFESSIONALS, OMGS) It’s elaborate but includes writing answers on one’s thighs, cutting open belts to hide notecards within them, wearing huge kabbas, or writing on clothing and wearing the same clothes for every day of the examination period because they’ve been specially prepared to hide information, and fanfolding paper and gluing them to the desk during the exam.
I feel as though this creative energy is being misplaced.
But back to my point: I feel like the light slap on the wrist that is given for the type of cheating listed above (usually ‘come clean the school every day for a month’ or ‘cut the grass with a machete’) is quite different from the weight of the entire book that has been hurled at this student. Curiously no questions were raised about why Father V left an administrative stamp out on his desk and left his office.
< / rant >
Posts
