When the exam coordinator confiscated her Legal Skills reader and accused her of fraud because it had written tabs to help her navigate it faster, Mirthe van der Voorst was in shock. ‘I cried’, she recalls. ‘I kept telling her that this was allowed and that I was sure of it.’ 

She finished her exam, though, and drove home. ‘It was over an hour in the dark and the rain. I cried in the car as well, it was an emotional rollercoaster.’

Soon, though, her desperation made way for determination. ‘An accusation of fraud is pretty bad. It can get you kicked out if something else happens’, she says. ‘I am not a fraud and I won’t go down as one.’

And so she decided to fight the allegation and clear her name. But it would prove to be a difficult road, with four hearings over six months. ‘I didn’t know enough about academic law. So I wasn’t very confident at first’, she says. 

No chance

Though there are no centralised numbers, it’s estimated that university-wide, hundreds of students are accused of fraud each year – the law faculty alone noted 136 instances over the past three years. They can plead their case at a hearing by their faculty’s board of examiners, but they often feel they don’t stand a chance.  

‘While I was telling my side of the story, I felt like the general vibe was: “Why would she even try to defend herself? It’s so obvious”’, says Mirthe. 

It was like I had a stamp on my head even before the hearing

Iris – journalism master

Iris – a pseudonym – who was accused of making up sources for a research assignment for her journalism master in 2023, has a similar tale. ‘It was like I had a stamp on my head even before the hearing. I didn’t feel that they listened to me or cared about what I had to say.’

The documentation she was sent on her case highlighted three references, she says, with the comment that they didn’t exist. For two of those sources, Iris had messed up the publishing years. The third one existed only as a physical copy at the library, and couldn’t be found digitally. 

‘I prepared documents with the names of the books, the sources, and drafts from months before. I spoke for forty-five minutes uninterrupted during the hearing’, Iris recounts. But the board upheld the plagiarism accusation and told Iris she had to retake the course. 

Crime trial

Maley Diaw Coral, a third-year applied physics student, was luckier, though he too was unhappy with the way things were handled. 

He was accused of plagiarism in a programming assignment, ‘but I wasn’t even informed of it’, he says. ‘I noticed that the grades were out for everyone, but I didn’t get mine. So I went to the teacher’s assistant, and he told me to expect an invite from the board of examiners.’

They didn’t have to make me feel like a criminal

Maley – third-year applied physics

After three weeks of ‘pure stress’, he finally got his hearing. ‘It felt more like a criminal trial, because of the whole situation: you’re sitting on a chair, alone, watched closely by four people surrounding you in a U-shape’, he recalls. ‘The vibe was as if I had killed someone. I had to wait before entering and when I did, there was this deafening silence.’

It was only then that Maley found out that he was alleged to have copied part of his code from another student. ‘They kept asking me questions, and I was afraid of answering because I didn’t know what exactly I had done wrong.’ 

Eventually, though, the board could not prove the accusation. ‘At first, I was relieved. But then, I became angry’, he says. ‘They didn’t have to make me feel like a criminal. And I should have known what I was accused of from the start.’

Board of appeal

Iris wanted to appeal the board’s decision, but she mistook the obligatory settlement meeting she was to attend as the appeal possibility itself. When she saw that one of the lecturers in that meeting was the same one she’d had in the hearing, she decided not to pursue an appeal. ‘I realised there was no point, I had no chance of winning’, she explains. 

She had no idea that she could take the case beyond the Faculty of Arts to the university’s central board of appeal for examinations (CBE). ‘So I dropped out. I couldn’t afford to  pay for more than half a year of tuition and rent, just for one course.’

From 2022 to 2024, fourteen fraud cases across the university made it to the CBE, most of them involving plagiarism. Nine were from the Faculty of Law, where Mirthe studies.

That doesn’t really surprise Diony Buikema, secretary of the board of examiners at the Faculty of Law. ‘I think that since we are the Faculty of Law, we take a tougher stance on plagiarism and misconduct. Also, as prospective lawyers, our students may be more likely to appeal our decisions than other students’, she explains.

Council of State

Mirthe also appealed to the CBE, although it didn’t help much. ‘Someone on the board got mad at me and everything became very dramatic. She thought I was just a sad little person, pretending to be innocent. I had no hope I’d win after that, but I kept pushing.’ 

I even had nightmares about it

Maley – third-year applied physics

The CBE upheld the board of examiners’ decision and Mirthe had to do a resit, for which she scored a 9. But still she took her case to the Council of State in The Hague. And then, finally, she was vindicated. Using tabs to navigate within legal texts is a common practice to help find articles in a legislation volume, the judges wrote in their ruling, and so they overturned the UG’s decision.

But Mirthe would never have gotten this far without the help of legal advice agency CumLaude Legal, she stresses. They offer legal help for students fighting their university, employer, or landlord – mostly pro bono. ‘Babette Salamat with the agency told me we had an 80 percent chance of winning this.’

Without her, Mirthe’s case might have ended at the board of examiners, she says. ‘You don’t get much information prior to the hearing. The board will tell you when your meeting is and that you can make a statement, but that’s mostly it.’

Emotional impact

While Mirthe and Maley are happy they ultimately won their cases, the accusations had a lot of emotional impact. ‘The stress I went through was only matched by a housing scam I was the victim of’, says Maley. ‘I even had nightmares about it.’

For Iris, the whole situation didn’t just cost her her diploma, but also took a toll on her mental health. ‘I fell into a severe depression after that. It left me with a bit of PTSD regarding the UG. I could never return.’

That’s something Babette Salamat recognises from her work with students. ‘I think people, especially examination boards, underestimate the emotional impact, because they tend to treat the students as criminals’, she says. ‘Students often cry during a hearing or afterwards.’

Still, she says, it is important to appeal in fraud cases. ‘These accusations are pretty serious, and most of the time it’s just an honest mistake. If you don’t fight it and something like that happens again, the sanctions get much worse. Students don’t realise that being expelled from a course could actually happen.’

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