Thank you for all of the responses guys! The latest news is that if we sign this, it won’t go on our record and we just take the 0. We can also have a meeting with the professor and a facilitator from the office to have a talk and if we reach a conclusion, it will not go on our record. If we do not reach an agreement, then the punishment can be larger and it possibly could get worse.
To answer @inn0v8r’s question from earlier, the answers may be similar but I don’t think they were too similar. For example, most questions were recalling a color to which I know my answers differed slightly. The other questions asked us to recall molarities of compounds which were just numbers, usually written in the front of the lab notebook in the first place, and those are the numbers that I used (not sure about the other person’s answers there). I’m not too sure if the professor actually has the GroupMe logs because if she did, there was a bit more compromising information on many friends of mine who are out free. There is nothing on me because I was not very active in it. I had been once, but it was much prior to this incident and it did not have anything to do with tests, answers, or anything of the sort.
@ProfessorD, I have read the academic honesty rules and we are being accused of “Giving or receiving answers to an examination scheduled for a later time”. There is much wiggle room because we were expecting another exam to be written, and none of us who took the exam Wednesday and later saw the ACTUAL exam, with the 2 new questions. The previous one was leaked and some questions happened to be… the exact same.
@intparent I was considering seeing my TA because he knew me, and he knew this head of the Chemistry labs as he had to deal with her quite a bit. He was more of a friend than a teacher, he was a grad student and we participated in some of the same programs so we had a lot in common and are on very friendly terms. I see him around campus a lot and I was considering just asking him for some advice in this situation and on dealing with this professor.
I will look into the ombudsman, I didn’t even know this existed! I will keep you guys updated with new information, and I really appreciate the help! Turns out, we might not be very affected by this, but it still could cost me a letter grade in a 1 credit hour class.