As exam time nears, students with too little sleep and too much caffeine will be looking for alternatives to make their studying easier.

Years ago, they could have walked over to the Stamp Student Union and dug through boxes of yellowing old exams, hunting for anything to help them out.

But now, a new website will give students the same access to old test materials from the convenience of their dorms. Koofers.com is similar to many other academic websites, such as RateMyProfessor.com and ourUMD.com, allowing students to rate professors and view grade distributions.

Unlike its competitors, however, Koofers offers online access to old tests, study guides, notes, quizzes, and other course materials available for download to any university student who registers.

Koofers provides the service free of charge, and thanks to the Student Government Association’s donation of the thousands of tests which used to be housed in their Student Test and Referral Center, they will be posted just in time for finals.

The website’s founder, Glynn LoPresti, said that while the concept of Koofers may seem revolutionary to students, they are simply applying new technology to an old practice.

“A lot of organizations keep these giant stashes of files [of past exams], but not nearly as many people end up benefiting from them as could,” LoPresti said. “What we’re offering is 24-hour access without having to dig through nasty old boxes to find what you’re looking for.”

These “nasty old boxes,” however, are exactly where the idea for Koofers originated, he said. Born at Virginia Tech, “Koofers” is derived from the word “coffers,” which refers to the bins old tests were kept in.

Student support is essential to the Web site’s success, LoPresti said, because students upload old study guides and tests to add to the stock.

While the founders admit that teachers are often hesitant to embrace the idea, they do not feel the site will contribute in any way to an increase in academic dishonesty or cheating.

“We have no desire to help people cheat,” said co-founder and Virginia Tech alumnus Patrick Gartlan. “The old SGA STARS center has already recognized that once you put the exam in a public forum, it’s not fair if only two kids have access to it and the rest don’t. We’re just leveling the playing field.”

LoPresti added that teachers are encouraged to sign up for their own account to monitor the tests that students upload.

“The best way to prevent cheating is for the teachers to get on there and see what’s up there themselves,” he said. “The more old-school teachers who are used to recycling old tests, well, they’re worried, but really this is forcing them to become better teachers – don’t use that test again from 20 years ago.”

Because students can upload their tests to add to the already large database of old tests, members of the SGA raised questions and concerns about Koofers increasing the opportunity for academic dishonesty. But the idea of Koofers was not “a hard sell” to the University Honor Council, and the Koofers founders said they had spoken to and gotten the go-ahead from officials in the Office of Student Conduct prior to launch.

But the idea of Koofers did face some resistance from the SGA, who feared their involvement would imply sponsorship of the website, SGA legislator Jenna Aidikoff said.

“We didn’t want to align with a company, but we wanted to do what was best for the student body,” she said.

After Koofers approached the SGA for support and their old test bank, the university-based website OurUMD followed suit, also requesting access to the thousands of tests which used to be held in the STARS Center.

Aidikoff, who sponsored a bill in support of the website but later withdrew it, said that while the idea behind Koofers was a good one, the SGA was uncomfortable with “picking a company.”

Ultimately, she said the SGA decided it would grant access to both companies in the order in which they asked for the tests.

“Koofers came to us first, so they could have the exams first,” she said. “Ultimately we’re really just excited that [the old exams] are being used again.”

The STARS Center, which previously cost the university thousands of dollars in student activities fees to operate and had limited hours due to understaffing, closed down in 2005 due to lack of resources.

“The STARS Center is the perfect example of what we’re trying to do, and the SGA endorsement forces people who think we’re the end of the world to stop and think that since the SGA helped us out, we must be working in the best interest of students,” Gartlan said. “People tend think this is the end of the world, it’s not – we’re the way of the future.”

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