University of Virginia Library

Poodah Pooh Pooh

The "poodah" situation at the University
has been highly unfair and very much in need
of attention for years. (For the benefit of
anyone unfamiliar with the term, the
Jeffersonian defines "poodah" as "helpful or
correct information that will help in preparing
for quizzes and exams; i.e., old tests"). That
significant complaints about the system have
been voiced only within the past two years is
rather amazing, for it is certainly nothing new,
although it might well be in its hey-day now.

The complaints have come, understandably
enough, from students who knew that other
students or groups of students had access to
old quizzes which were not available to them.
The complaints have been especially loud in
respect to courses in which the professors are
known to repeat quizzes or sections of quizzes
from year to year, thereby making the old
quizzes tremendously helpful, and therefore
putting those who have them at a tremendous
advantage. Last year a professor received such
a complaint and ended up counting only the
new portion of a quiz, which happened to be
a very small percentage of it, to determine the
grade for the whole quiz. Similar complaints
were lodged during the first semester exams,
and one incredible situation developed involving
anonymous phone calls between students
and a case of window-breaking.

The problem is that a perpetual organization,
such as a fraternity, has an overwhelming
advantage in collecting poodah over
the years. When professors allow students to
keep copies of quizzes fraternity-men have
only to go home and file them away; when
professors do not allow students to keep
copies of quizzes fraternity-men have only to
assign questions to brothers in a course to be
copied or remembered and copied later for
inclusion in the file. Thus no course is
immune to the process of poodah-collecting.
Needless to say, the individual non-fraternity
student hardly has a chance.

Because of the value of the old tests,
fraternities which are especially adept at
collecting them become especially protective
of their poodah files. They keep them carefully
locked, and some allow only certain
brothers, "poodarians" of sorts, to touch
them. They would never let someone from a
rival house have access to them, much less
some other individual student. Interestingly
enough, those fraternities most notorious for
their unscrupulousness in poodah collecting
and hording consistently lead the other fraternities
academically.

Such a situation is hardly representative of,
or conductive to, an academic atmosphere.
Worse, it is hardly fair. Because, however, it is
absurd - and, indeed, unfair - to ask
"poodah-hawks" to give up the fruits of their
efforts or to stop adding to them, the solution
must come from elsewhere. The obvious
answer is for professors never to give the same
questions more than once, but everyone is
aware of the value of any sort of old test as a
legitimate study guide, so that would not help
much. Thus the best solution would be to
insure that if any student has access to old
tests as study guides, every student has access
to them if he wants it. Professors could place
copies of their old tests on file in the library
or in department offices to achieve this.

We urge deans of the various schools to
require or encourage their professors to make
their old tests available to all students, and, if
they do not, we urge individual professors to
take the initiative to do so themselves. Only
then can we be sure that every student has an
equal chance for an "A" or, more important,
for a "D-", in any course.