Get all your news in one place.
100's of premium titles.
One app.
Start reading
Fortune
Fortune
Catherina Gioino

'Humanity has chosen to become idiots': This Brown professor switched to take-home exams after a mass shooting and discovered mass cheating

Brown University Professor Roberto Serrano, a man in a suit holding onto a gold trophy--the King Of Spain Economy Award"-- before Spain's King Felipe and a painted wall. (Credit: Aldara Zarraoa/Getty Images)

When Brown University Professor Roberto Serrano changed the format of his midterm exam last spring, he was thinking about his students’ mental health, not academic fraud. Two of them had been shot, including Ella Cook, a young woman who had sat in his office just days before the December 13 massacre at Brown University and asked him to be her academic advisor.

“We had a very nice conversation,” Serrano recalled in an interview with Fortune. “She was a wonderful young woman, full of energy, full of ideas. Imagine my shock when a few days after that conversation took place, they released the names of the two mortal victims, and I saw that one of them was her.”

Sign up to read this article
Read news from 100's of titles, curated specifically for you.
Already a member? Sign in here
Related Stories
Top stories on inkl right now
One subscription that gives you access to news from hundreds of sites
Already a member? Sign in here
Our Picks
Fourteen days free
Download the app
One app. One membership.
100+ trusted global sources.