Students have accused the Classics faculty of causing “anger” over “mistakes and disorganisation” this year’s exams in an open letter campaign.

The letter claims that exam organisers of the IB papers handed multiple students the wrong papers, which had frequent editing errors as well as passages from past papers, giving those who had seen them before an unfair advantage.

The exam’s Greek and Roman Philosophy paper, which is shared by both the Classics and Philosophy Triposes, was also leaked to Philosophy students by mistake weeks before the actual exam, Varsity understands. This came as students were sent the real exam paper when they asked for practice papers to revise with.

The letter also states that an examiner tried to correct errors with the final copy of one of the papers by replacing it with his own draft in the exam hall. This delayed the exam by fifteen minutes, while students sitting the paper in other rooms were not given a physical copy of the exam as a result of the last-minute change.

One Classfess user wrote that at one point invigilators had to “tell the exam hall to calm down as everyone’s laughing so hard at their incompetence”.

The Classics Undergraduate Representatives responsible for organising the open letter told Varsity the amount of content 1B students were expected to learn with the new course changes “verges on ridiculous”.

The Representatives said that they hoped the letter would lead to a rethink of the course structure as well as an apology from the Classics faculty, which they said students were “upset” not to have received as of yet.

A spokesperson for the Classics faculty told Varsity: “The Faculty of Classics acknowledges that there were some errors in the implementation of the Part 1B examination this year. We are investigating how these occurred and what steps can be taken to prevent similar errors in future.”

“We take very seriously the students’ concerns and are planning to review the new Part 1B of the Tripos once this year’s examination is complete,” they continued.