Carmelites zero in on messed up marks

DHNS

Bangalore, 08 May 2010: It was a disappointing day for eleven students of Mount Carmel College in the city eagerly waiting for their second PUC results. All of them knew they had done well enough to entertain any doubts of failing the exams.

But as each of them checked their results on the web on Thursday and then made a double check in the college on Friday, they were simply shocked. All of them were declared “fail”. The reason: each of them was awarded zero mark in Hindi! In fact, there was a twelfth candidate from the college who too got zero in Hindi, though in this particular case the student had also failed in three other subjects.

What perplexed most of the students was that ten of them had scored 60 per cent and above in other five subjects, seven of them actually above 75 per cent. So, getting zero in one particular subject was unbelievable. It meant that they would have to appear for the supplementary exam next month to clear their Hindi paper.
What was even more surprising was that the “zero scorers” stood within the roll number range 230798 to 230819 and all of their names began with ‘Sh” - like Shefa Khan, Sheryll D’Silva, Shilpa, Shiny Sequeira, Shivani Poonja and Shirley Louis.
Sheryll D’Silva collapsed when she found her mark to be zero. “My mother had to wake me up. I got 93 in biology and 87 in physics, but because of the zero score in Hindi, my overall percentage came down to 75,” she told Deccan Herald.

Another student, Shirley Louis, who had taken PCME, said she thought that she was the only one to have failed in Hindi and that upset her. But “My brother called up and told me that he was informed that many other students too had failed only in Hindi with zero marks,” she said.

Shirley had her parents to support her, but students who stayed alone went through a harrowing day. “There are chances they would have got depressed and some might even have contemplated committing suicide,” Sheryll said.
The girls and their parents took up the matter to the Department of Pre-University Education during the day. They met director D H Shankarnarayan, who assured them that the matter would be looked into.

There was a big relief by late in the evening. An official from Vidhan Soudha informed the students that all of them had cleared the Hindi examination. "We were told the revised marks would be updated by Monday when we get our marks card from the college," Shirley said. Nobody in the department was available to throw light on how the goof-up happened.