Sieging Cheaters

Hi ya! Thanks for clicking by. How're you faring today? Ready for a mugga and a virtual treat? Of course you are! Say, were you ever tempted to cheat in school? I can say that I never was. The thought never even crossed my mind. However, in some places it's a way of life.

As many as 50 exam monitors were forced to take cover at a high school in Zhongxiang, China, in June, fending off outraged students (and some parents) who hurled insults and stones at them after the monitors blocked cheating schemes on the all-important national "gaokao" exams. (It was "siege warfare," and eventually "hundreds" of police responded, according to a dispatch in the Daily Telegraph of London.) 

Metal detectors had found secret transmitters and contraband cellphones used by groups beaming in exam answers from outside. Independent proctors had been assigned because of longstanding suspicions that the schools' own proctors routinely enabled cheating (with results such as the 99 identical papers submitted in one subject on the previous year's exam). 

Said one student (in the mob of about 2,000), noting how widespread cheating is nationally, "There is no fairness if you do not let us cheat (also)." 

Something's rotten and it's not in Denmark! 

See ya, eh!

Bob