125 students of Harvard University have been implicated in the largest cheating scandal in the college's recent history. Over 60 of those students have been forced to withdraw for a standard length of two to four terms.

'Veritas', Harvard's motto, translates as 'truth'.NathanF

The investigation centered around a take-home exam on “Introduction to Congress” sat by almost 280 students last Spring. The results were to count towards the students' final grades.

The statement, released by the university last Friday, announced the results of the investigations that concluded in December of last year. An email was sent across campus on the same day by Dr. Micheal D. Smith, Dean of the Faculty of Arts and Sciences. The email assued that the academic integrity board had resolved all of the cases and dealt with them accordingly.

The Harvard Crimson reported that 279 students were enrolled in the course. It was common knowledge around campus that the course was considered easy and classes optional.

Previous exam regulations encouraged “open collaboration” between students. However last year the exam regulations were changed, forbidding any collaboration or discussion with “Professors, teaching fellows, and others”.

This change in exam rules appeared to have caused confusion, as some teaching fellows reportedly went over the exam in open discussion. The university have not yet commented on whether any blame rested on the academic staff or teaching assistants.

While some students reportedly copied and pasted notes, others were implicated just for using notes from these classes in which a collaboration of ideas had been encouraged.

The scandal has had an adverse effect on the college's sports teams. A large proportion of Varsity athletes were enrolled in the course and several sports teams have been affected. Two basketball team co-captains have resigned from the team roster themselves in order to preserve their eligibility for future enrollment in the inter-college league.

The internationally renowned Ivy League university's reputation has been affected by the scandal, whose motto is “Veritas”, Latin for “Truth”. Smith stated that the school committee is now committed to “strengthening a culture of academic honesty” and “promoting ethics in scholarship”.

The founder of Staples and a Harvard alumnus, Thomas Stemberg, has a son currently studying there. Stemberg heavily criticised the probing as having “embarrassed innocent students” and “vindicated a guilty faculty.” He was disgraced with the time and resources spent on investigations, reflecting upon the negative effects it would have had on students.

Harvard undergraduate Council President Tara Raghuveer told The Huffington Post that some implicated students were anxious about whether they would be able to finish the year due to the amount of time the investigations took up. “The students who are implicated in this scandal from last spring still need to be recognized as members of our community ... They shouldn't feel alienated from Harvard,” she said.

The question of where the accountability lies has yet to be fully addressed. Jay Harris, Harvard’s dean of undergraduate education, told The Boston Globe that the incident is evidence of Student’s shifting attitudes to the idea of intellectual property, and “what’s involved in moving bits and pixels around.” “This is not a unique student problem… it’s a national and international problem,” he added.

Cambridge alumnus Nabir Kabirpour, who studied at Harvard at Postgraduate level thought the style of testing may be suspect. “It makes it very easy for students to confer... With the immense pressure they are under, the force of temptation is amplified by several orders of magnitude.”

Howard Gardner, a professor at Harvard's Graduate School of Education told the New York Times that the university should give a much more complete account of what happened and why.

Whether the incident is indicative of a large-scale trend at this present time appears unclear, but the number of students implicated here has alarmed many. Since the scandal, attitudes towards exam regulations in the university have been treated with extra caution.