A Milton Academy student has been expelled and three others have been suspended for the rest of the school year after they hacked into the elite private school's computer system, changed grades, altered attendance records, and, in one case, gained access to an exam before it was administered, according to a letter school officials sent to parents last week.
The security breach last month prompted school administrators to ask faculty to review the midterm grades of all students in the upper school.
"The actions of all four students had potentially profound effects," Rick Hardy, the interim head of school, wrote in the letter. "They undermined the security of communication among all members of the community and threatened the validity of the attendance and grading systems, which must be inviolable."
The incident is the latest scandal to rock the 209-year-old school south of Boston. Over the past two years, Milton Academy has weathered a sex scandal involving a 15-year-old girl who had engaged in oral sex with five hockey players in the campus locker room, a controversial effort to close its lower school, and the resignation of its long-serving head of school.
In his letter, Hardy wrote that a male student from the upper school obtained access to e-mail and network passwords in October. Over recent weeks, he wrote, the boy downloaded to a personal computer others' passwords and changed his attendance record, several of his grades, and the grades of other students in his classes.
The boy, who has been expelled, shared the passwords with the three upper school classmates. Hardy wrote that all three viewed academy e-mail accounts. One student logged in as another person and changed his attendance record. Another one gained access to a test before a teacher gave it to a class.
Neither Hardy nor other school officials returned calls yesterday. Hardy did not identify any of the students in the letter.
But in the letter, he wrote that he wanted to send a message that the students violated the school's "most fundamental community value."
"Milton expects of each student complete integrity in all matters, personal and academic," he wrote. "We expect that students will act honestly. . . . Attempting to obtain any other person's password is an integrity violation."
After criticizing the school's actions in prior scandals, some parents said they think the school acted appropriately in swiftly expelling and suspending the students.
"I think the school did an excellent job of analyzing the problem, handing out discipline, and communicating with the school community," said Sam Perkins, a lawyer from Milton, whose daughter is in the 10th grade and whose three other children graduated from the academy. "The school can't tolerate this level of what amounts to dishonesty. At the same time, these kids probably did not appreciate how destructive this would be to their lives. . . . The tragedy here is that these students didn't have the judgment and maturity to recognize how destructive they were being."
Milton Academy, where tuition ranges from $16,700 a year for kindergarten to $36,775 for upper school boarding students, is not the first high school in the region targeted by student hackers.
Last year, officials at Boston Latin School called in police to investigate allegations that a junior obtained remote access to a teacher's computer for four months and used it to retrieve passwords, record the teacher's keystrokes, and steal tests and student records.
A survey last year by the Josephson Institute of Ethics, a nonprofit organization in Los Angeles, found that 60 percent of some 36,000 high school students polled said they had cheated on a test within the previous year. Thirty-five percent said they had cheated two or more times.
Michael Josephson, the institute's president, said students cheat "because they can - and so few of them get caught.
"Once you know students are cheating and not getting punished, there's a huge temptation to cheat," he said. "Schools have to set standards and demand integrity. Otherwise, the world favors the cheaters, and kids are quick to learn this."
Since discovering that Milton Academy's network security had been breached, Hardy wrote, school officials have asked all faculty and students to change their passwords. The school, which counts Governor Deval Patrick and Senator Edward M. Kennedy among its alumni, has already begun changing all its network passwords and reviewing the validity of midterm grades.
"We believe that teachers' comments were unchanged and that the infiltration of attendance records was very limited," Hardy wrote.
He said he hopes students learn a lesson about the "central relevance of scrupulous honesty" from the alleged intrusion.
"We are sad to have to make these decisions, but they come in response to grave mistakes," he wrote. "Acting with 'complete integrity' has never been more important, and together we need to help students understand how that value plays out in their everyday actions and choices."
David Abel can be reached at dabel@globe.com.
