Plagiarizing

Why is it that a handful of students can negatively stereotype a population so easily? Students have a honor code, even online students must abide by the honor code or face the consequences. We just had a major world history midterm exam and apparantly some students took it upon themselves to copy and paste essays responses from the internet onto their EXAM. First of all, I didn't even realize we could copy/paste. Second, the instructor has already explained that this is a closed book, no notes exam. Apparantly, we have some bold students in our class.

I'm concerned because there were several students that were caught plagiarizing. Several. Wow, that is shocking. It is also completely unfair to the rest of us. I studied my heart out and could only manage a solid 90. I'm frustrated. That exam was very hard, covered seven chapters of material, and took a full three hours to complete. But most importantly, I don't want the actions of those students to reflect on the rest of the class. I went straight to the Distance Education Coordinator.