BY JENNA FELDMAN — On November 12, 2013, a fire alarm rang loudly at the University of Sydney, forcing 450 law students to abandon their Corporate Law final exam. This exam, as with many other law school finals, would constitute the students’ complete semester grade. The University told the students that they must leave their incomplete closed-book exams and evacuate the building. As students took cover from the rain, some began consulting their notes and discussing the exam’s content with one another. Others stood idly by, unsure what to do. The evacuation lasted about half an hour.
When the students returned to the lecture hall, a proctor allegedly told them that because of the unusual circumstances, the exam would probably not count and the students should treat the remaining exam period as “good practice.” At a time of such uncertainty, many students took the proctor’s advice.
As a result, the atmosphere in the room had changed. Some students left the exam early and others commented that they did not perform as well as they could have. If the exam had not counted, perhaps the students would be able to move past the strange events of the day. However, contrary to the previous suggestion that the exams would count only as practice, Joellen Riley, Dean of the Sydney Law School at the University of Sydney, ultimately decided that the exam would not be rescheduled.
Dean Riley cited various reasons for her decision. She did not want to penalize the students who had prepared and performed well and did not want the students to re-study during the holidays. Overall, she felt strongly that rescheduling the exam would be more harmful than helpful.
What angered many was the language and tone that Dean Riley used in a “[f]irst world problems” response letter to the University’s student newspaper, in which she deemed the rescheduling concept a “primary school solution” and expressed that the students were overreacting when there were other, more pressing and devastating tragedies in the world. She sarcastically compared the exam fiasco to the typhoon in the Philippines and later referred to the situation as a “typhoon-in-a-teacup.” In the end, Dean Riley submitted that the students should move past the incident to keep their emotions from “poison[ing] their experience of law school” because “[s]tuff does happen” and “will keep happening.”
Dean Riley’s suggestion that students treat this turn of events as a “life lesson” definitely has merit because lawyers often face unexpected situations that test their patience and flexibility; however, perhaps what is most concerning about the ordeal is the uncertainty that everyone—students, professors, and administrators—experienced, notwithstanding the fact that the University of Sydney has a written policy governing emergency evacuations during exams. The policy outlines several steps that examination supervisors must take in an evacuation situation and specifically states that “[i]f at any point during the waiting period the examination conditions deteriorate or the examination itself is compromised, the examination is deemed to be abandoned.”
Interestingly, contrary to the proctor’s alleged predictions that the exam would not count, Dean Riley did not feel that the evacuation affected the examination conditions substantially enough to warrant abandonment. In the aforementioned letter, she pointed out that the cheating allegations were “dreadful rumours,” in part because no student had filed a formal complaint.
So, the question remains: How should a law school handle this type of situation?
Having a written policy is the first place to start. When stakes are so high, students should, at the very least, feel certain that their school has a prepared structure that covers unexpected situations. Although people are critical of Dean Riley’s interpretation of the language of the University of Sydney’s policy, at least the school has written procedures in place that the members of the university community may reference at any time.
Incidentally, unlike the University of Sydney, many law schools lack written procedures governing emergency evacuations during exams. Given the recent increased threats to school campuses nationwide, it is imperative that law schools learn from what happened at the University of Sydney and prescribe emergency exam evacuation policies.
With such high pressure and anxiety surrounding exam period, law students should at least know what to expect if a fire alarm rings during an exam.
