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Wherever there are rules there will be temptations for people to break them. Consequently, there is always the possibility of people being labelled deviant whether or not they do break the rules. University examinations are rule-riddled events shrouded in a 'suspicion awareness context' where suspecting invigilators are on guard against possible cheaters. Students, aware of this, must avoid all taint of suspicion and the dire consequences of being labelled a cheater. These avoidance strategies consist of impression management in the form of disclaimers. It is the purpose of this article to describe the bizarre and seemingly paranoid length students writing exams go to in: the control of their eyes, deployment of books and notes, and choice of space to avoid the stigma of being labelled a cheater. The emphasis is primarily on the innocent noncheaters but there is brief treatment also of the guilty.

This study was an examination of comfortable proxemic distances assumed by the interactants, female Canadian students. Previous studies were consistent with Hall's (1959, 1966) cultural model only when the interactants were from the same cultural group. When they were from different cultural groups, however, the cultural model was not adequate: The findings were more consistent with a symbolic interactionist interpretation, namely, that a negotiation takes place and the comfortable distance is adjusted to that of both groups. In this study, we held cultural group and sex constant and introduced the problem of the interviewer's retreat from the original comfortable distance established by the subject. In all cases, the subject re-established a new comfortable distance that was a compromise between the one originally chosen and the distance assumed by the interviewer.

Le fondement theorique de notre etude sur l'experience vecue par les etudiants d'une greve du corps professoral d'une universite s'appuie principalement sur la formulation theorique de Blumer selon laquelle l'interaction [...]

This study investigated the relationship of distance to eye contact and perception of possible physical threat by interrelating Argyle and Dean's (1965) compensatory hypothesis with Dosey and Meisels' (1969) perception of personal space as a ' body buffer zone.' Forty male and 40 female Canadians between 18 and 59 years of age served as subjects. Settings were classified as either potentially threatening or nonthreatening. The degree of eye contact was varied by having experimenters wear or not wear sunglasses. As expected, there was support for Dosey and Meisels' theory that in situations perceived to be potentially threatening, people react by standing farther back and using personal space as a buffer zone. Argyle and Dean's hypothesis was not fully supported because in the potentially threatening situation, the lower the degree of eye contact, the farther the distance of interaction between respondents and experimenters. The findings reemphasize the importance of respondents' perceptions for creating meaning within a particular social context.

The suggestion that students at present day universities participate in magic at exam time may seem unusual. This study views 'magic' as behavior directed toward achieving an outcome, involving many everyday and commonplace acts, but seeming to rely for success on some mystical element. Hundreds of personal accounts from students describing their exam-related behaviors provide the basis for a classification system of their 'magical practices.' The classification yields findings regarding the use of magic for luck and the avoidance of bad luck. Student magic is found to be idiosyncratic, inconsistent, and never malevolent as it often is in preliterate societies. Such differences between preliterate magic, other modern forms, and student magic are related to the complexity and heterogeneity of the larger society, the cultural norms, and the degree of collective action involved.