_{"What do we want? No resits! When don't we want them? Now, or at any time in the academic year".}

Fuming students have fired off an irate letter to The University of Law after an exam they took was voided.

Last Thursday, ULaw students sat a contract law SBAQ assessment (multiple choice). But the next day, the assessment office sent an email apologising to students, noting that the exam "was similar to the past paper" in their materials, and so it would be voided and replaced with another paper the following week.

It was a "farcical day", a student told RollOnFriday, as the university then sent another email that afternoon "rowing back on that decision", and giving students the option to use the result for their written contract law exam to count for the whole module, or sit another SBAQ paper later in the year. 

Outside of the university, a source at a City firm who got wind of what happened told RoF that its "graduate recruitment team is furious" and "it's gone down like a bag of flaming sh*t with them." 

Students sent a letter to ULaw stating that they "object in the strongest terms to the decision to retrospectively void" the exam. The letter was signed by over 500 students, said a source.

In the lengthy missive, seen by RollOnFriday, students requested that the voided assessment "must be marked and counted" with "no substitution of marks" and "no resits". 

"By retrospectively voiding a completed assessment and reconfiguring the assessment structure, weighting and timing mid-exam period, the University has departed from the assessment regime communicated to students at the outset of the course", it said.

"This decision has caused significant and unnecessary stress during an already intense examination period....many sacrificed personal commitments and significant time over the Christmas period to prepare."

ULaw assessors may be tempted to mark the students on the core skills they demonstrated by drafting the letter, with a strong depth of understanding, structure, and referencing. And whether their critical evaluation of ULaw's regulations earns them a big tick or a large cross in the margin.

A spokesperson for ULaw told RollOnFriday, "We have sincerely apologised to students for this error and for the disruption and stress it may have caused, particularly given the time and effort invested in preparation. Our priority has been to minimise any disadvantage to students, which is why we voided the SBAQ and confirmed that no replacement assessment would be required during this exam period." 

"We have also put clear options in place for any student who feels they have been adversely affected, including access to our procedural defect process and the opportunity to sit a further assessment where appropriate. We remain committed to listening to students’ concerns and to maintaining high standards of fairness and academic integrity in our assessments.” 

In a further email sent to students this week, the uni reiterated its apology. Noting that the exam constituted 40% of the marks for the contract module, it said it recognised that "on this occasion we fell short of our usual standards".

The uni said that "Having carefully considered your feedback", it is offering students an alternative to resitting the exam, which will be a revised mark "statistically moderated" by reference to their result in the online written exam component of the module.

In the hierarchy of exam cock-ups, ULaw's error sits below the time that Kaplan engineered a "total shitshow" when candidates were forced to wait for hours in overheated rooms to take the SQE, which was then cancelled. And the incident when Kaplan wrongly told 175 candidates they failed SQE1.

Take ROF's exam if you work in a law firm, a simple multiple choice survey where you always score 100%: