The student, who informed the newspaper about last year’s torts law exam which featured a badly-worded question that the university eventually apologised for, made those comments in the wake of the cancellation of Monday’s intellectual property law (LAWS329) exam.
Students sitting the afternoon exam were stopped about 30 minutes into their exam. They were told that they had been given the wrong paper and that the exam was cancelled.
It turned out an earlier version of the exam was printed and given to students, and not the final version that they were meant to receive.
"Thankfully I wasn’t in the exam this time, but it affected a lot of my friends. I think there were around 90 students who were affected altogether.
"In my opinion, this is really disappointing. I really thought the university would have taken steps to prevent this sort of thing from happening. As far as I’m aware, this isn’t happening at any other law school in the country."
Acting deputy vice-chancellor academic Emeritus Prof James Maclaurin said students were given the option of sitting the correct exam yesterday or at a second sitting (with a different exam paper) in semester 2.
"If they are unable to attend either sitting, or have other special circumstances which impact their ability to sit the exam, they will be able to apply for special consideration.
"The university is focused on supporting affected students and is looking into how the situation arose and will review any necessary procedures."
It comes after a host of controversies involving law exams at Otago.
In semester 1 last year, a student had to sit the company law exam earlier due to a timetable clash. The student was given an identical exam to the rest of the class, which is not standard practice, and the student revealed what was in the exam.
In semester 2 last year, the law faculty printed hundreds of torts exams which students attempted, only to discover errors in the content and questions.
The university acknowledged these issues, but Prof Maclaurin said they were all separate.
"This is a materially different issue. The law faculty has checking processes in place for its examinations, processes that have been further strengthened in recent times. These processes were followed.
"Further, the company law matter was an individual student integrity issue. Although it occurred in a law examination, it was not a law faculty process or systems failure."
But the student was not convinced by the university’s response.
"It really just shows there is a lack of proofreading of printed exams going on still. Now I sort of have to go into my law exams accepting that the questions might be changed during the exam, that they might be wrong, or that the whole exam might be cancelled."
