Several students have confessed to cheating on an accounting take-home test that was due April 3, according to Accounting Department Chair John Eichenseher.

The professor allowed her students to bring the test home so they could attend a lecture by Enron scandal whistle-blower Sherry Watkins, who spoke on campus April 2.

She instructed the students to work independently, but the test problems were clearly solved in groups, according to business school external-relations spokesperson Pam Benjamin.

Eichenseher said the professor retested the students in class because she suspected the cheating, and the students’ scores were strikingly different from the first test.

Benjamin said the take-home test involved problems that clearly demonstrated collaboration for the similar answers.

“It wasn’t just a coincidence,” Benjamin said.

Eichenseher said students who do not confess will face major consequences that will hurt their chances of acceptance into a five-year graduate accounting program. He said that of the 76 students in the class, between 35 and 40 have applied for the program.

“We are reevaluating all of the applications we have received,” Eichenseher said. “Half of our undergrads go to this five-year program.”

Benjamin said business school faculty would meet to discuss the incident and the future of take-home tests, but a date has not been set.

“There is nothing imminent, and we’re examining all sorts of things,” Benjamin said. “We will allow the due process of the investigation to take place first. The truth is this may boil down to being not that big of a deal.”

She said department faculty are investigating the incident and plan to use standard academic misconduct guidelines to discipline the students involved.

“We’re still meeting to figure out exactly what happened,” Benjamin said.

Students who performed much worse on the in-class exam will retain that score instead of the grade received on the take-home test.

Several business school students agreed that the class was Kathy Hurtt’s Accounting Systems 340 class. The class studies principles and problems of accounting system design, organization for accounting control, internal control procedures and internal reports. The class also studies how to control, secure and audit information system applications.