Biology 204 students received an unauthorized e-mail from an unknown person purporting to have attached a file copy of the first midterm from the spring 2004 class last Friday.
Using the pseudonym Pancho Sanchez, an unidentified person distributed a 6-page, 50-question biology midterm to the class.
The subject line of the e-mail read "a little help on your first test."
On Sunday, the course instructor, biology Prof. Mark Kopeny sent out an e-mail to students instructing them to delete the e-mail without reading it on Sunday.
"It turns out it was a copy from a former semester," Kopeny later said. "But only a handful of questions were the same."
Some students said they believed someone distributed an altered version of the midterm in order to mislead the class and gain an unfair advantage.
"In fact we have changed almost all of the questions," Kopeny said. "At most, maybe 3 out of 200 points would be similar."
Kopeny said he was confident that the test would be fair.
The distribution of a test could be cause for an Honor Violation, though Kopeny said he will not initiate Honor cases for those who read the test.
"We won't say before hearing a case whether it would be an Honor violation or not," Honor Committee Chair Meghan Sullivan said. "Generally we encourage people to initiate cases so that we can begin an investigation."
The Honor Committee Bylaws define "cheating" to include "unauthorized acquisition of advance knowledge of the contents of an exam or assignment."
Though no students contacted by The Cavalier Daily said they opened the e-mail, some felt that the attachment would be read by a number of classmates, many of whom might not realize the e-mail was not from an instructor.
"I feel like a lot of students, because they check their e-mail often, would have opened the email before [Kopeny] sent out a response about the e-mail," second-year College student Mallory Heslop said.
This is the first time that Kopeny has taught this course, and he said that he does not know how someone received a copy of a previous test.
U.Va. computer technicians are currently trying to trace the origin of the e-mail.
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