Tracey Tyler
LEGAL AFFAIRS REPORTER
Toronto Star
May 03, 2001
University of Toronto law students who falsified exam scores in the course of applying for summer jobs will be appealing their dean's decision to suspend them for a
year and include notations on their transcripts.
Eight students suspended so far will ask the university provost to review the penalty, which is ``too harsh'' and doesn't consider ``structural problems (the dean) has
created,'' their lawyer, Clayton Ruby, said yesterday.
The suspended students are among 30 in the law school's first-year class who admitted giving prospective employers inflated scores from December practice tests
that weren't included in official transcripts.
The other 22 students are expected to learn of their penalty tomorrow.
While the students admit lying was wrong, equally to blame is the school's cozy relationship with Bay St. law firms and an academic culture that suggests ``if you
don't have a Bay St. job you're nothing,'' Ruby contends.
``There were only 70 kids who applied for these jobs,'' he said. ``If nearly half of them cheat, there are structural problems the dean is refusing to address.''
The pursuit of corporate law jobs is emphasized at U of T ``more than anywhere else,'' Ruby argues.
In this case, students learned only after writing the test that it wasn't just to gauge their own progress and that the scores would be taken into account by firms
offering jobs, he said.
``If they had known at the beginning . . . they could have decided, `Okay, I'm going to work really hard for these exams,' '' he said.
Ruby suggested that, amid education cutbacks, students with $40,000 loans were more susceptible to the temptation to do what they could to land big-paying jobs.
Spokesperson Susan Bloch-Nevitte said the university hasn't released any information about the sanctions ``for a very good and principled reason.''
``We made a commitment to the students we would meet with each and every one of them before going public on results of investigation, which we fully intended to
do,'' she said, after some penalties were reported yesterday. ``The majority of kids still don't know what the sanctions are.''
Dean Ron Daniels and his representatives were unavailable for comment.
However, he was quoted in a news release on the university's Web site. ``I'm astonished that anyone who purports to care about the students' welfare would publicly
discuss the details of the investigation before all of the students have been informed of the outcome and have completed their exams,'' he said. ``I certainly do not
intend to do so until May 10.''
Ruby said that when he and the students pressed for a punishment better tailored to the situation, they were told they could not help craft the penalty.
Being ordered to spend a summer doing legal work pro bono would be more appropriate, he said yesterday.
As it stands, he said, their legal careers are effectively finished because the transcript notation branding them as cheats will remain there when they are expected to
apply for articling jobs, a form of apprenticeship before being called to the bar.