News Brief | Accounting 102 class falls for April Fool's joke

Last night, the students in Accounting professor Victor Defeo's Managerial Accounting class were the victims of an April Fool's Day prank.

At 9:22 p.m., an e-mail was sent to the course's listserv from what appeared to be Defeo's Wharton e-mail address saying that, because a number of students were discovered to have cheated on the last exam, all students enrolled would be required to take a make-up exam this Saturday at 10 a.m.

A follow-up e-mail was sent at 11:42 p.m. saying that the previous e-mail was a joke.

At 12:07 this morning, a third e-mail was sent. According to this final message, the previous two e-mails were sent by a student or group of students who hacked into Defeo's account.

"At this time, I do not know who sent the email but I am very concerned that someone has used my name falsely," the third e-mail read. "If it was someone's idea of an April Fools joke, I'm not laughing. I intend to do everything that I can to identify the source and to deal with that source as harshly as possible."

Wharton sophomore Sean Coghlan, who is in the class, said the first e-mail was followed by chaos and a number of upset phone calls between students in the class.

He added that a number of students e-mailed Defeo - including Coghlan, who said he would be out of town this weekend and unavailable for a make-up exam.

Although Coghlan noted that Defeo is a fairly laidback professor, he guess that "he probably is really pissed off and angry about it."

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