Cheating but not really

So this happened in my AP biology course and wanted to get the public opinion of this controversy. This was during finals week and some students in the class were studying online FRQ’s from College Board. The next day on the exam the same FRQ found on college board was on the test and many students wrote the same answers as those found on the rubric. They were then accused of academic dishonesty and plagiarism and were basically failed. Is what they did cheating, or was it playing to their resources (No one knew what the exam question was before the test day).

If they couldn’t put the answer in their own words, its plagiarism.

If the students weren’t told that this was prohibited, it is not cheating.

If it was on the College Board website, I do not think it is cheating. Nobody stole questions or went to a stolen/illegal source. Shame on College Board (again… sigh).

It’s not the students’ faults at all. They were simply studying and found the questions on the test online. Any teacher that made their final using easily found online questions should sort of expect this, and they definitely shouldn’t punish the students. It happens in my AP Physics class a lot. My teacher uses entire tests from one website…