As the students sit down in a tense stupor over their keyboard, ready to write their four-hour exam, they notice something that causes a wave of anxiety to wash over them.

The F1 key is missing on their keyboard.

Who could have committed such a heinous crime? Was it for a silly art project, is it just a lame joke, or is someone secretly an exam dodging genius? No one knows for sure.

Since the end of May and beginning of June, someone has been slowly, but surely, removing the F1 keys and then some from at least 25 keyboards in three of the exam rooms at Dalgas Have.

Although this sounds like a trifling matter, the event is causing the IT department a serious headache. According to Pernille Kjærsgaard, the campus desk coordinator, students keep coming down from the exam room to complain that their F1 key is missing, which is disruptive to the campus services workflow.

“I could see this being a prank or a joke, but it’s not really funny for us. There are serious costs involved with replacing 25 keyboards, and right now CBS is under a tight budget,” she says.

Unfortunately, the keyboard manufacturer does not sell separate keys and each keyboard costs around 300DKK. And that does not include the amount of labor involved with replacing them. Switching the old keyboards out for new ones is an arduous task, which takes several hours to accomplish.

For this reason, Pernille Kjærsgaard pleadingly asks that whoever took them to bring them back discreetly with a note.

“I’m not judging whoever took them and we don’t want to get anyone in trouble. We just want them back. Also, I would be really interested in hearing why they took them in the first place, so, leave a note because I want in on the joke” she says laughingly.