Blue books, big problems: Officials should promote campus use of Securexam

It’s exam time, which means we’ll all get the pleasure of scrawling out longhand essays in our blue books soon.

You know how it goes:

Your handwriting gets progressively worse as the class period drags on. You shake out your cramped hand to no avail. And by the end, it’s frozen into pen-holding shape for the rest of the day.

Then your professors have to attempt to read your exam that looks like Sanskrit. (This should be an academic field of study — deciphering the obscure handwritings of the rare species Collegeus Studentus).

Thanks to Securexam, none of this has to happen.

It’s time for the University to implement Securexam across campus, thus eliminating the need for blue books.

This program allows students to type their exams into a text program on their laptops — Mac or PC — that blocks out access to all other computer programs to prevent cheating.

Professors can then download the exam and grade it on the computer, thus eliminating the paper waste.

UNC has had the capability to use Securexam for about three years and a trial has gone well. Now any student may request to use Securexam.

We could go on about the problems with blue books until we’re, well, blue in the face.

Because the pages are so small, planning out your exam answers and the writing process in general is much more difficult.

Further, they’re a huge waste of paper. Even if you don’t use the whole book for your exam, you automatically waste all that paper.

And finally, they’re outdated and inefficient. This isn’t 1860. We don’t have to scrawl out long-winded treatises by hand anymore. We have these things called computers that allow you to type fast enough to keep up with your thoughts.

We’re not sure where the blue book tradition came from. We all know professors on the cusp of retirement who reminisce about taking their undergraduate exams on blue books.

Let’s end this blue book madness. For a school that has a computer initiative that aims for every student to have a laptop, Securexam is the way to go.