[jeff95350]

Even assuming the teacher was lazy, or plagiarized the test, that's simply no excuse.

Anyone who sees questions that they had early access to from some special source (a source not available to all students) has a clear ethical responsibility to inform the teacher that they had special access.

It might be slightly ambiguous when, by happenstance, a few questions are the same or similar. But when all of the questions are the same, what are these students thinking? They know that other students are seeing these particular questions for the first time even if they studied intensely.

Students can choose how they learn. But the professors choose how the students are tested, and this test was clearly compromised due to student dishonesty. You can throw other factors in if you want, but dishonest is dishonest.

[protomyth]

So, the crux of your argument is that these students had a "special source (a source not available to all students) has a clear ethical responsibility to inform the teacher that they had special access."

I take it that you believe members of Greek / Clubs on campus that have old tests are dishonest (not everyone is a member)? A student buying a study guide that finds the teacher just used a sample test from the study guide is also dishonest?

I guess my big problem with your reasoning is that I can make a bunch of honest decisions in my studying for a class and then become dishonest by the dishonesty of a teacher.

[jeff95350]

"I can make a bunch of honest decisions in my studying for a class and then become dishonest by the dishonesty of a teacher"

The thing that I think you are missing is that it's all about mutual expectations.

It's the same thing if you take a picture of a TV and put it on eBay for $100. Then, someone buys it and you send them the picture of the TV rather than the TV itself. That's totally unethical of the seller, even if they never say that they are selling a TV explicitly. The buyer expects to receive a TV, and the seller knows that the buyer expects to receive a TV, and proceeds knowing that the buyer's expectation is flawed. Maybe the seller really likes photographing TVs as a form of art, and thinks that their work is worth $100 per print (honest so far); but that doesn't matter because they knew the buyer had other expectations, and did not inform them (dishonest now).

The fact that many students didn't have access to the test ahead of time, and that the students received the test surreptitiously (as another comment said) is evidence of the teacher's expectation, and of the students' knowledge of the teacher's expectation. The fact that students knew this expectation was flawed means that saying nothing is dishonest.

[psyklic]

It is all about what a teacher or other relevant authority says is okay to use. If the teacher explicitly says not to use old exams, then the members of Greek clubs are cheating if they use their archives. Similarly, if a publisher's test bank says that students may not use it, then it is cheating if students use it to study.