Early in the morning of March 18, the Department of Psychology at UTM sent out an email to all active Psychological and Brain Sciences (PBS) students on the email list server (listserv). The email contained attachments of both the regular and special deferred copies of the final exam for PSY354: The Biopsychology of Sex.

Chain of emails leaked

The leaked emails contained the final copies of the exams after “minor formatting changes” were made, and requested Taryn E. Grieder — the course’s professor — to submit them through the Course Information System (CIS) by 5:00 pm on March 20. 

This email was intended only for Grieder, but was instead sent to all active PBS students at UTM. As a result, private emails sent by Jodie Stewart, the academic advisor and undergraduate program administrator at the department of PBS, and Grieder — which contained the exams — were forwarded to the students. 

A follow-up email was sent 15 minutes later, requesting all students to “disregard and delete” the email and its attachments, stating that “they were sent in error.”

Grieder wrote in a March 18 announcement to the class, “Hello wonderful students, sorry for the confusing emails today – as you likely saw, everyone on the Psych department’s email list (listserv) was accidentally sent our final exam! I will be creating a new final exam. However, I believe it still works out in your favour, as now you have a sample exam to use as a study aid :).”

Students’ reactions

One student in the course wrote to The Varsity that they were “initially worried” about negative effects for the class until the announcement.  “Honestly, I think she was pretty graceful about the whole thing.”

Students were quick to post screenshot copies of the email on the UTM and U of T Reddit pages, commenting on the ordeal.

“The fact that the prof sent it directly to them and they managed to forward it to the entire student body? Yeah that’s a massive fumble,” one user wrote.

Other students expressed concerns for the professor who would have to rewrite the entire exam, “It takes forever to make exams from scratch. The prof must be fuming.” 

In one Reddit thread, students joked that the Department of Psychology was playing “mind games” with students. A user suggested that the email itself may have been the exam, with another user responding that it’s “still too hard to pass.”

Process of final exam submissions

On March 12, Stewart sent out a confidential email to the undergraduate program reminding professors to submit their final exam scripts online through the new CIS platform by the deadline provided.

The first step of this new process involves professors emailing their draft final exam script to the PBS undergraduate team for review. Following this, the team reviews the exam draft and makes format changes, then sends the final copy back to the professor. The final step requires the professor to submit the final exam script through CIS for department approval.

On March 17, Grieder completed the first step of this process and sent her draft final exam script for PSY354 to the PBS undergraduate team.

The emails from Stewart and Grieder were sent to the correct recipients and not the entire PBS student body. It is unclear who from the department sent the email to the PBS listserv in error.