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Big Brother Test Hall At Penn State
A new Big Brother-style test hall has been constructed at Penn State University. It is a high security room consisting of cubicles and cameras.
When your professor has scheduled an exam, you swipe your ID card for access, walk through a turnstile and smile while you are photographed on your way to an assigned cube. Proctors walk around making sure you don't have any contraband that cannot be viewed by the video cameras, which feed into a security room staffed by, you guessed it, more proctors.
Each cubicle has a retrotastic computer containing the necessary testing software; the computer has been cut off from the Internet to prevent cheating.
Penn State's secure testing hall is apparently just the latest in the trend of universities giving up on honor codes and going with hard core test security lockdown.
Students who have previously satisfied their English requirements by reading Cliff's Notes versions of 1984 might regret not having read this passage:
If Apple computer follows up on their recent patent application, they will be able to simplify their setup - see Apple Apparently Working On Orwell's Telescreen for details.
It was even conceivable that they watched everybody all the time. But at any rate they could plug in your wire whenever they wanted to. You had to live -- did live, from habit that became instinct -- in the assumption that every sound you made was overheard, and, except in darkness, every movement scrutinized.
(Read more about Orwell's telescreen)
Scroll down for more stories in the same category. (Story submitted 10/13/2007)
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