Law student Mirthe van der Voorst was cleared of fraud allegations during her exam. The Council of State overturned the decision made by the UG’s Board of Appeal for Examinations (CBE).
During her law and legal skills exam on October 23, 2023, examiners confiscated Van der Voorst’s reader after finding tabs containing legal terms. The programme accused her of fraud, as tabs were allegedly prohibited.
The examination board then declared the exam invalid. Van der Voorst appealed the decision to the CBE, but it was rejected. She had to take a resit, which she passed with a nine out of ten. But she wasn’t satisfied with the situation.
Disproportionate
In May, she appealed to the Council of State. ‘I was genuinely convinced that it wasn’t fraud and that the sanctions were disproportionate,’ Van der Voorst says. ‘An accusation of fraud is pretty bad. It can get you kicked out if something else happens. I didn’t want that.’
She was confident in her case because nowhere in the rules does it say that tabs weren’t allowed. Her legal expertise helped her in the appeal process. ‘I wouldn’t have taken it this far otherwise. It would have been much scarier.’
Common practice
Even so, it was still nerve-wracking: ‘The judges didn’t really seem to be on my side when they questioned me.’ But the Council of State ruled in her favour. Using tabs to navigate within legal texts is a common practice to help find articles in a legislation volume, the judges wrote in the ruling.
Their decision was based on photographs of the reader, as the book was lost after it had been taken away from her. ‘My representative asked me if I wanted to pursue that, but I’m going to leave it alone. I’ve won my case and that is enough.’