A 29-year-old woman, who is a graduate of Rutgers University-New Brunswick, was charged for using a false document to appear aged 15 to enroll at New Brunswick high school in New Jersey. Her motive is unclear.
29-year-old woman fools officials, attends high school
Hyejeong Shin, a 29-year-old woman, was arrested last week after she allegedly posed as a high school student and attended classes at New Brunswick High School in New Jersey, KCRA reported.
Allegedly, Shin submitted a fake birth certificate to school officials indicating she was 15 years old.
According to school superintendent Aubrey Johnson, Shin attended classes for four days “before being found out and barred from entering district property.”
Woman charged with using false documents to enroll in high school
Hyejeong Shin was charged last week with one count of providing a false government document with the intent to verify one’s identity or age, the New Brunswick Police Department stated in a news release on Wednesday, Yahoo reported.
The charge is a third-degree offense, according to police.
Why did Rutgers grad want to pose as a teen and attend high school?
Shin’s motivation for posing as a 15-year-old remains unclear, and authorities are still investigating.
So far, authorities have learned that 29-year-old Hyejeong Shin is actually a graduate of Rutgers University-New Brunswick. Shin graduated in 2019 with a Bachelor of Arts in political science with a minor in Chinese, according to Rutgers University spokesperson Dory Devlin, Yahoo News reported.
She is identified as a Fall 2017 Learning Community Scholar at the Institute for Research on Women (IRW), School of the Arts and Sciences on Rutgers’ website. Her focus that year was “Feminism and Resistance: Politics, Peril, Power.”
“My major academic interests are language and linguistics, and how they affect human identity and culture,” Shin said in her biographical note on the Rutgers IRW website. “I’m also interested in understanding humanitarian issues in global society.”
Students and public voice concerns over safety
As a result of the revelation that an adult had gained access, both students and parents alike are voicing their concerns, Yahoo reported.
Deputy Director J.T. Miller of the New Brunswick Police Department pointed out: “Proof of guardianship is not necessary to immediately enroll an unaccompanied child or youth.”
“Although a school district might request documents such as a birth certificate to verify a child’s age, a school district may not prevent or discourage a child, including an unaccompanied child, from enrolling in or attending school because he or she lacks a birth certificate or has records that indicate a foreign place of birth, such as a foreign birth certificate,” Miller clarified.
New Brunswick Public Schools Superintendent Aubrey Johnson said once staff “determined it was dealing with fraudulent information,” they immediately notified authorities and “the individual in question has now been charged.”
