According to Barlow, some students are even considering not submitting their drafts, claiming that they lost the drafts to protest what she called a “witch hunt.”

Gov 97b student John P. Chambers ’07 agreed that the essay questions should be changed from year to year.

“[Considering] the fact that the course has remained pretty much the same for the last three years, I can see where the temptation would come from to use other people’s papers,” Chambers said.

Kline told The Crimson that some students have told him they think plagiarism “occurs with some frequency” in the course.

“No one has expressed to me any surprise that this occurred, although several have been surprised that we were able to detect it,” Kline wrote.

Buttenwieser University Professor Stanley Hoffman and Assistant Professor of Government Cindy Skach, the faculty members who lead Gov 97b, could not be reached for comment yesterday.

—Staff writer Ying Wang can be reached at yingwang@fas.harvard.edu.