If I Have Another Test At The Fuckass Testing Center, I Will Become Benson’s Problem In Even More Interesting Ways

The journey is long and arduous, but it’s a journey I must take. Having spent the previous night diligently studying and now allegedly wiser, I don my finest (least-stained) outfit and prepare for the expedition to the testing center. I battle through a torrential rain and fight my way through the traffic on Synergy, dodging 2-ton hunks of violent metal seemingly intent on killing me personally (or maybe Texas is just like that). At long last, I arrive at the testing center. As I burst through and find safety from the elements, a student – who most likely doesn’t enjoy torturing cats, but I can’t make any certain claims – taps a sign. No hoodies. I try to justify my drip, but I am sent away like a teenager at prom with too revealing of an outfit. Only my crime is that I am, if anything, dressing too modestly. Dejected, I brave the elements once again to frantically search my apartment for another shirt.

Herein lies my first problem with the testing center: the dress code is irrational. Unless the testing center is supposing I have eyes in the back of my head, I can’t think of any academic advantage a hoodie would give me that a normal sweater wouldn’t. It also prohibits, among other things, lip balm, hair scrunchies, and keys. If these rules are supposed to prevent anything other than Heather cosplays or a general sense of security knowing that your keys aren’t being stolen, that purpose is lost on me. All contraband hair ties must be left in one of the (comparatively few) lockers, and you’ll just have to hope it’s not awkward to dodge around the line to get to your locker when you finally get out of the exam.

Having reached the safety of my humble abode once again, I hunt to find a shirt that’s technically clean. Luckily, my general apprehensiveness got me to the testing center significantly before I was actually scheduled to take the exam. Otherwise, I would be deeply screwed at this point. I find a shirt and sprint back to the testing center. This time I am greeted not by a disapproving prom chaperone but by a line of nervous students winding around the building.

Here lies the second problem with the testing center: they’re very strict on timings, but often make you wait a horrendously long time to even get into the test. I have sat in that line for the majority of an hour, desperately trying to hold onto the information I worked so hard to cram into my skull. That’s time you have to spiral and think about everything except what’s relevant to the exam you’re about to take. All of that is actively detrimental to doing well. The era of nervous separation from notes is before we factor in commuting times – I’ve always lived on-campus and thus within walking distance of the testing center, and I don’t envy the experiences of students who have to scour the tiny parking lot for a space and suffer the compound worry of the parking situation and their exams. Truly, hats off to you. Now please stop trying to run me over.

I finally reach the front of the line. Despite all my catastrophizing over the past hour, I think I still have most of my knowledge intact. The proctor asks for my name, and I give it. We stare into each other – first into her confused eyes, then into my eyes confused at the confusion in her eyes, then her eyes pondering why my eyes are confused about my own name, then back to my eyes as they transition to a sudden burst of understanding as I sheepishly flip over the back of the comet card to reveal my government name.

Herein lies my third problem with the testing center: it can’t possibly be this hard to use people’s preferred names. When you set a preferred name in Galaxy, that’s the name that appears on the class roster, that’s the name that will appear in eLearning, and, most importantly, that’s the name you are saying you want to be called. A few semesters ago, this problem was tangible on a personal level – a professor was confused as to why I hadn’t signed up for an exam, and I had to explain that I had registered for the exam and that he should search for my last name (and not the nickname he knew me by) in the registry. The whole situation was more emails than it frankly needed to be, and added additional stress to my life when I was already dealing with the Week Of All Time that was midterms. This problem isn’t unique to the testing center – if you’re using your comet card to dine around campus, or completing SONA credits for a psychology class, or the recipient of a mass email from a staff member that doesn’t know how to check the “correct field in the system,” you’ll get the same naming issue – but making sure you’re correctly registered for a test is a higher-stakes event than getting lunch. 

For transgender students who haven’t had their names legally changed yet, this is a further obstacle. Hearing one’s deadname can be extremely disorientating, especially right before an important exam. Transgender people deserve to be exactly as stressed as everyone else for exactly the same reasons as everyone else, and the fact that no one at the testing center has bothered accounting for transgender students is genuinely troubling. 

The solution? In-class tests.

Because they’re hosted in class, there is no additional travel burden – either in walking from campus across Synergy or in fighting for the few parking spaces in the SP/N lot. The dress code is normalized, so no one has to worry about being sent home over chapstick or keys. The exams happen during class time in a room that can have all the students in it at once, so students can study before the exam and don’t have to wait in line for an hour without notes. For larger classes, professors or TAs check the names on the front of comet cards and make sure it matches the name on the exam, and no one has to make sure the social security administration, the state department of health, and the department of motor vehicles all agree on exactly what that name is. For smaller classes, IDs might be entirely redundant if a professor knows their students by name.

While I recognize that professors may be apprehensive about this approach, it has never once failed to the best of my knowledge. I’ve taken exams with ~150 other students in the room and it wasn’t an issue. I’ve taken exams for an online class (that was originally scheduled to have a room) with ~80 students in person, and everything went smoothly. It’s worked for paper exams, for online exams, and, as previously stated, is basically the default in higher-level classes (or at very least, the higher-level classes I’ve taken). Although cheating is a potential issue, this can be mitigated – I’ve taken exams with the Lockdown Browser and the professor didn’t report any problems. While there might be more organization on the professor or TA’s side (although it wouldn’t be with the testing center, which would reduce the equation by a layer of complexity), the benefit to students – comfort, peace of mind – in my opinion serveley outweighs these costs. 

The material function of the testing center is to add stress to student’s lives. Students deserve to be exactly as miserable as the test makes them, and not a hair more. Ergo, the university should pivot away from the center and towards in-class tests.