'Precious' law students should stop moaning, says Sydney University dean The letter followed complaints by students at the 163-year-old university following a break during a closed-book corporations law exam, taken by about 450 students. Some students claimed the 25-minute break allowed people to cheat and check their notes. Some also complained that after returning to the examination hall they were told by a lecturer that the exam would be rescheduled and should be treated as "good practice." The three-hour exam was the only assessment for the subject. Professor Riley noted, with some degree of sarcasm, that the alleged cheating might have been avoided if the students had been marched out to the wet lawns to "sit legs akimbo, hand on heads until the crisis passed." "Law students can be an anxious and competitive lot," she said. They do worry dreadfully about exam marks Requiring them to sit all over again would have been one of those vindictive, school ma'm decisions that I really, really hated when I was a little kid, made to sit with aching arms raised above my head, until some wretched urchin confessed to spilling his milk in the playground. The letter angered some students and prompted further complaints that their objections were not being taken seriously. "It reflects a lack of respect for the effort that students put in, the money they are paying - in some cases thousands, if they are international students," one student told ABC News. James Higgins, the incoming president of the university law society, said the dean's letter was "unfortunate" and "disappointing." "I think there's quite mixed views in the student body on whether to have a resit," Mr Higgins told ABC News. Whatever way we go with this, not everyone is going to be happy. Professor Riley said she hoped the complaining students eventually learnt as lawyers to remain professional and objective "even in the most annoying circumstances."