All Modern and Medieval Languages and Linguistics (MMLL) exams due to be released as “take-home assessments” tomorrow were made available today after some papers were accidentally released early.

In an email sent at 12.30pm today (25/05), the MMLL exams team wrote: “Due to an issue with some exam papers having accidentally been uploaded early, and wanting to avoid unfair student advantage, we have decided to make all Type 2 take-home assessment papers available immediately…We apologise for any disruption to your schedule for today.”

While the MML, History and Modern Languages (HML) and Linguistics papers were due to be released tomorrow (26/05) at 9am, the original deadline will remain, giving more time to those who saw the email immediately.

In addition to the early release of papers, the language papers released for Part II MML and HML students had an incorrect deadline listed on their covers, which stated that they should be handed in at 4pm 30th May instead of 27th. This was corrected in an email sent to Part II students at 12.52pm today.

Many students have been left confused about whether to attend supervisions scheduled for today, or if they will receive marked work due to be handed back in advance of the exams.

One MML finalist, who was at a medical appointment when she received the email, was “very very angry”, claiming that the Faculty has been “incompetent during [her] entire degree” and that it was “hypocritical” to say that the early release could “avoid unfair disadvantage”. She told Varsity: “Essentially they’re giving some of us an extra day, unevenly. It’s not like you can record the exact moment you got the email.”

Another finalist told Varsity that the early release of papers was “a disaster” during an “already stressful exam period”: “Many of my friends were away from their laptops when the email came through, taking a break before the exams kicked off in full. How is it fair that the length of time available to take papers can be determined by how alert someone is to their emails?”

This follows a series of technical difficulties around the MML oral exams last month, which were labelled a “a shambles” after exams were rescheduled to “random” times during the day.

Geoffrey Kantaris, co-chair of the MMLL faculty told Varsity: “We understand that the early release of our take-home assessments has created anxiety, and we apologise to students for any extra stress that has been caused.”

He confirmed that the papers released accidentally belonged to the Linguistics Tripos, and that given the risk of students accessing the papers early “it was decided that the most equitable course of action was to release all papers and notify the students that they were available”. He emphasised that “assessments within the take-home system are classified by the University as coursework, and students are given a generous period of three working days per paper to write their answers” repeating the faculty’s assurance that the staged submission deadlines “remain unchanged.”

He continued: “Students are encouraged to use the generous time allowances to arrange their own writing timetable around other fixed commitments. We therefore do not believe that any students have been unfairly advantaged or disadvantaged by early release of the questions.”

Varsity contacted the University for comment.