B-School Calls Off Final After Content Is Leaked

A final marketing examination at the Business School was halted Saturday after a B-School student told the head of the marketing studies department by telephone that some students had prior knowledge of the examination.

The decision to cancel the examination, which was in progress, came after Theodore Levitt, professor of Business Administration and head of market studies, met with the ten-member Student Education Committee. The SEC representatives told Levitt that an estimated 10 per cent of the 800-member first-year class had advance knowledge of the examination's content.

All first-year students are required to take the four-hour marketing examination. The exam will be read-ministered next Fall.

Levitt said yesterday he did not know how many students obtained the test materials, but added that once the information got out, more people probably sought to obtain the materials.

"They probably wanted to protect their own performance," Lewitt explained. "We grade on a curve, and prior knowledge would be an unfair advantage."

No action has been taken over the weekend. The marketing examination was the last test for the first-year class, and many students left immediately after the cancellation.

The cancellation came an hour and 45 minutes after the exam had started. Levitt received word of the leaking of test materials Saturday morning, just before the exam was scheduled to begin.

Levitt said that the decision to cancel was made on the "basis of discussions with the student representatives. The faculty was just not well-informed," Levitt said. "Our decision was based on the information which the students transmitted to us of the extent of the knowledge of the test."

The SEC representatives were scheduled to take the examination with the rest of their class. Levitt said that the B-School faculty has had a "close relationship with the SEC," and it seemed appropriate to consult the SEC members about the situation.

The B-School class, which contains 800 students, is divided into ten sections. Each section then selects its SEC representative.

Levitt said that other options besides readministering the test were discussed with the SEC members, but were discarded because they tended to lower the academic standards of the exam.

The other options all provided the students with additional time in which to complete the exam, based on the assumption that everyone had now seen the test and would have the same advantage.

The phone call came to Levitt from a first-year student who identified himself. Levitt said he has made no investigation into the incident yet, and has no knowledge of how the test materials were leaked.