Okanagan College student sues after being suspended for cheating five times

An Okanagan College student with a lot on the line has turned to the courts after he was suspended from school for cheating.

Harsh Verma was a student at the Kelowna campus from early 2024 to December 2025 when he was suspended. In that time, he was caught on five separate occasions cheating on his exams and assignments, according to a recent BC Supreme Court decision.

The college suspended him but when Verma pushed his case, backed down because of procedural errors. The college later hired an investigator to verify the claims he plagiarized a bibliography in his English class, cheated on two Psychology exams, plagiarized and submitted someone else’s Sociology paper and cheated on Sociology quizzes.

The president of the college then confirmed the one-year suspension, but Verma continued to argue his case. At one point, according to the decision, college president Neil Fassina threatened to call security.

Verma argued his case in court himself. He told Justice Barbara Young he has suffered “extreme financial consequences” from the suspension, claiming general and specific damages including “immigration-related” harms.

“He comes from a poor family in India. His parents sent him to Canada by taking out a loan on their house,” Young wrote. “He does not have enough money to pay rent, food, or his basic needs. He cannot work because he is suspended and he has no income. He was dropped from the rest of his five courses.”

The decision notes another student reported seeing him use his cell phone during the Psychology exam but offers no other details of the allegations. It does however detail how the college dealt with the issue, as the case required.

Young found no issue with the college’s decision-making, however, so Verma cannot return for a year, the actual dates of which remain under some dispute.

Because the college had to correct its procedural errors, the suspension was bumped to January 2027, making Verma’s problems much worse. Justice Young said he was essentially kicked out of the college and its computer systems by December 2025 — suspended in practice if not technicality. She kicked that back to the college with an invitation to end his suspension some time earlier.