UTS exam theft shock (1 Viewer)

[miss-smexy]

http://www.news.com.au/dailytelegraph/story/0,22049,22018723-5007132,00.html

By Luke McIlveen
July 05, 2007 12:00am
THE prestigious University of Technology Sydney has been rocked by the theft of completed exam papers from the office of a senior lecturer.
The Daily Telegraph can reveal four papers were stolen and others possibly tampered with during the 15th-floor break-in at the Department of Mathematical Sciences last Tuesday night.
Senior lecturer and respected mathematician Layna Groen said yesterday her door was forced open and the completed papers stolen before the final scores of 90 students could be tallied.
"Mine was the only office broken into," Dr Groen told The Daily Telegraph yesterday.
"There have been break-ins before but usually it is more than one office and they are looking for computer equipment. It is suspicious that papers were taken.
"The four students concerned were not friends, I have checked that – they were unrelated.
"It was possibly a student who was unhappy with their results has taken them. It's also possible they broke in to change the results, to tamper with them."
She said police were called and her office dusted for fingerprints after a colleague noticed her badly damaged office door about 11pm last Tuesday. No arrests have been made or charges laid.
The final exam on operations research modelling was completed by first-year UTS Bachelor of Science students on June 19.
The paper asked students to complete six detailed mathematical problems over three hours.
The theft left academics with no choice but to force the four students whose papers disappeared to sit a different exam.
The prospect of re-sitting the exams has left students furious, including some from overseas who are now questioning the university's credibility.
One foreign student sent a chain email accusing the thief of ruining his stay in Australia.
"If you are one of the three and you don't reply back to me then don't be surprised if I'll conduct further private investigation on you (I will get the names anyway in some way)," he wrote.
"Whoever it has been, if it has been a student, man you have been really ridiculous, and be sure it does not finish here."
Dr Groen said her office had been broken into before, but never for exam papers.
"It's bizarre, I had the papers sitting on my desk and had not finished marking them," she said.
"They were the only thing of value – I don't keep a laptop in my office or anything like that."
"I had marked the papers but I had not yet tallied up the marks."
"I can't speculate. It's the first time anything like this has happened. It's certainly not something we would want to advertise."
Despite being shocked by the theft, Dr Groen said she did not believe any of her students were capable of stealing back their exams to achieve a better result.

They can get in that easily? Don't they have security cams?

 

[jemsta]

fuck im glad they didnt steal the papers for my math subject.
havent really noticed any CCTV cams around the classrooms/offices in the tower building, so i doubt theyll catch who it is.
fuck id be pissed too if that happened to me, but lol at the foreign student.

 

[xeuyrawp]

THE prestigious University of Technology Sydney

lol. I wonder what university this guy went to.

 

[fernando]

yeah... you'd think they'd have security cams ay? oh well.. wonder what they're going to do now =| yikes.

 

[K.]

[/b]lol. I wonder what university this guy went to.

hahah Rob, that was the first thing I thought!

 

[xeuyrawp]

hahah Rob, that was the first thing I thought!

I'm a bit dubious about reading a newspaper article; this guy wouldn't even be allowed to write on wikipedia with his weasle words.

 

[iwannarock]

fuckin hell who ever broke in has balls of steel.

they are my hero.

its like that movie slackers.

 

[Bobness]

fuckin hell who ever broke in has balls of steel.

they are my hero.

its like that movie slackers.

And if it was a girl who actually did it.

 

[HotShot]

Dr Groen said her office had been broken into before, but never for exam papers.

Ever heard of locks?

 

[Jordan.J]

That does suck
I've done that subject, and it isnt really that hard. It's a first semester, first year subject.

Im not sure, but I think they do have cameras in the tower, but not in the area where the staff room area in level 15.

 

[wuddie]

does anyone here go to uts? do you feel ashamed that your 'senior lectuerer' can't even manage to keep the exams from being stolen?

 

[Jordan.J]

does anyone here go to uts? do you feel ashamed that your 'senior lectuerer' can't even manage to keep the exams from being stolen?

I seriously doubt that

 

[ragnarok]

does anyone here go to uts? do you feel ashamed that your 'senior lectuerer' can't even manage to keep the exams from being stolen?

No, we just take over the UTS forum and post randomised threads which happen to be related to the university. And why the hell would anyone here feel ashamed? It's not something we did, nor something they stupidly did not to mention it says it's a forced entry.

What does the staff member's status have to do anything? It'd be less shameful if they were just an honours student that was helping grading (not that I know if they do or not ) and moreso if it was in the Vice-Chancellor's office?

Anyway, if you were to steal the papers, you'd at least take more/the whole pile as to lower suspicion. Unless of course, the person doing it in the first place was doing it for revenge or something so a person may be blamed

 

[Huratio]

Nah, this has been moved from somewhere. I would have seen it earlier if it was posted here @ 7 Jul 2007, 5:59 PM.

4 papers.. you'd hate to be one of the three innocents in this case.

It is of no concern to most of the students... There have been worse things happening in other universities e.g. the Macq's missing funds and the taxi driver murder and UNSW's collapse of it's Asia campus. I would not have used the words: 'questioning the university's credibility' in the article.

 

[jase_]

I don't think there are cameras in the staff rooms as this would be an invasion of privacy (just like most work places don't have cameras in the areas where people work). They most likely have cameras in the main corridor though, but given the age of the building, I'm not sure how well they work! A few years ago there were a few break-ins to the staff offices in Building 10, since you could walk through the roof and stuff. So instead of going through the door, you could just go into a computer lab or a room and just get into the roof and walk over the staff room doors instead! I think since then they have put stuff in the roofs block off certain areas.

 

[Logistics]

Well not sure about the other buildings but Building 1 has cameras on every floor from what I have seen.

Break-in aside the biggest shock should be that papers haven't been marked and put into the system. We have to wait way to long to get our marks.

Wait too long to be dissapointed lol

 

[Vangineer]

steal exam papers? lol must be an international or full fee student...that's so sad!

 

[Huratio]

Hmm, you can't generalise like this. Local students could have done this too.