It is not a credit of the Varsity Administration when it claimed it has handed over seven students to police for involving in cheating. Only one week back a Mobile Court also sentenced 13 students to two years’ imprisonment for using illegal electronic devices during ‘Ka’ unit admission test. In our view the failure of the Varsity Administration time and again to make admission test leakage proof is only encouraging the malpractice and endangering students to fall into the trap.
It is an open secret that a syndicate of DU staff, ruling party student leaders and coaching center operators are routinely indulging in the leakage as a lucrative business and the Varsity Administration is helpless to take them to the task. They are politically powerful above disciplinary actions. If the news report is correct that the acting proctor of the Dhaka University is involved with the syndicate such leakage can never be stopped.
We can’t let students to become criminals going to the varsity for entry test. People wonder why police are not questioning the Varsity Authorities and arresting syndicate members; who are almost openly known by their face instead of arresting students who mostly act on temptation to get admission in the Dhaka University by any means. Had there been not any leakage, they would not have been the victims of leakage. In our view the University Grants Commission (UGC) as the regulatory body of all universities can’t shelter such crime spiraling. Civil society leaders also can’t sit silent.
The clarification of the Vice Chancellor of Dhaka University Dr AAMS Arefin Siddiqui that there is no legal ground of the leakage of questions before the examination makes no sense. No matter it came to their notice before or after, the fact is that questions were in circulation and syndicate members sabotaged a fair admission test while making money out of it. Even all public universities are now using admission test as a way of milking money from admission seekers by hundreds and thousands annually to share it internally with teachers and others. It is no more an academic exercise. Corruptions are everywhere and everybody is misusing power.
How question leakage takes place during selection to printing and distribution of questions is not unknown to all concerned quarters. The question is whether the DU and such other authorities will decisively act against it.
