Carson tricked by Yale Record, not by professor
The false makeup exam was part of a hoax by the Yale Record, not by Carson’s professor. No Yale employee had anything to do with the hoax.
Parody
Strictly Off The Record
By LEW SCHWARTZ
Some say it looked the same, some say it read the same. But alas, The Oldest College Daily defies duplication.
The Yale Record … yesterday presented a parody issue of the Yale Daily NEWS, as the latest rendition of the Oldest College Humor Magazine.
The Record presented an almost identical issue of the OCD, complete with articles written under the names of NEWS reporters.
The magazine also announced in the substitute NEWS that a series of Psychology 10 exams were destroyed and stated that a makeup would be held at 7:30 last evening.
A false exam held in 203 WLH was attended by several students not aware that the replacement exam was a hoax. The exams distributed to the group closely resembled the psychology exam given on Monday morning.
The only identification of the parody’s source was on the masthead, located on page two of the paper. The copyright was attributed to THE YALE RECORD, INC.
Lew Schwartz, “Parody: Strictly Off The Record,” Yale Daily News, January 14, 1970. © 1970 by Yale Daily News Publishing Co.; republished without permission.
Cf. Ben Carson, Gifted Hands: The Ben Carson Story, with Cecil Murphey (Grand Rapids, MI: Zondervan, 1990), 89–90:
Changing the Rules
… The day before I’d been informed that the final examination papers in a psychology class, Perceptions 301, “were inadvertently burned.” I’d taken the exam two days earlier but, with the other students, would have to repeat the test.
And so I, with about 150 other students, went to the designated auditorium for the repeat exam.
As soon as we received the tests, the professor walked out of the classroom. Before I had a chance to read the first question, I heard a loud groan behind me.
“Are they kidding?” someone whispered loudly.
As I stared at the questions, I couldn’t believe them either. They were incredibly difficult, if not impossible.…
“Forget it,” I heard one girl say to another. “Let’s go back and study this. We can say we didn’t read the notice. Then when they repeat it, we’ll be ready.”…
Within half an hour from the time the examination began, I was the only student left in the room. Like the others, I was tempted to walk out, but I had read the notice, and I couldn’t lie and say I hadn’t.…
Suddenly the door of the classroom opened noisily, disrupting my flow of thought. As I turned, my gaze met that of the professor.… The professor came toward me. With her was a photographer for the Yale Daily News who paused and snapped my picture.
“What’s going on?” I asked.
“A hoax,” the teacher said. “We wanted to see who was the most honest student in the class.” She smiled again. “And that’s you.”
The professor then did something even better. She handed me a ten-dollar bill.
The class was Psychology 10, not Perceptions 301. The photographer was affiliated with the Yale Record, not the Yale Daily News. The exam was attended by “several” students, not by 150. The hoaxers may have wanted to see who was the most gullible student, not the most honest.
— James K. Herms (Nov. 8, 2015, 07:15 GMT).