Housing website loses junior draw times in network crash

Seniors who have already started planning the designs for their 200-square-foot singles might have to scale back.

When the University network server crashed Saturday, it did more than stall e-mail use for an hour. The error in the server disabled the housing website and deleted the room draw master list from the system.

OIT has taken all necessary steps to retrieve the housing department's database, but if it is unable to make progress by 9 a.m. today, Undergraduate Housing Coordinator Adam Rockman said seniors will have to resubmit their draw groups.

"We are taking all possible measures to retrieve the room draw list," he said, "but if we can't, students who drew last Tuesday are going to be put back in the shuffle and draw again."

He added that students who are scheduled to draw today should proceed as planned unless they hear otherwise. "We expect that this will have been taken care of by then," he said.

Rockman first noticed the problem when he signed onto his computer to send an e-mail to dormitory assistant Anne Braveman '03 in response to a broken hot water tap in Little Hall. E-mail was working but the housing website, which Rockman had set as his homepage, did not appear on his screen. He immediately contacted OIT, which suggested that a hacker may have found his way into the system.

"It seems suspicious that we have found no problems with other systems," said Dan Oberst, OIT director of enterprise services. "And that leads me to believe that someone might have wanted to target the housing site directly."

Rockman said in the past, students have threatened housing when they have a "bad spell" with room draw.

"Unfortunately there are some juniors who have had bad luck with room draw for the last two years and are extremely bitter when they receive a bad time for the third year in a row."

Student reaction to the potential change in room draw time largely reflected their current position on the master list.

Caroline Bone '03 who shared the number one draw time with Leigh Poretzky '03 and drew a 250-square-foot single last week, was livid.

"I don't think it's fair that just because OIT or housing or whoever messed up we should have to suffer," she said. "They should have been better prepared for something like this."

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Others, however, did not share Bone's views.

Alison Fraser '03, scheduled to draw late Wednesday morning, said the problems with the system may be a way of righting past wrongs. "It's really not fair that some students always end up with bad draw times," she said. "After living in Butler [College] for two years, no one should have to put up with crappy upperclass rooms as well."

Some have even gone as far as to compare the mysterious hacker to Robin Hood, taking draw times and giving them to the students most in need.

"I think it's about time that somebody did something about this," Fraser said.

As far as who that somebody may have been, Public Safety officials are investigating the incident and said they have a prime suspect."We think we have located someone with the tact and know-how to pull off something of this scale," Public Safety Crime Prevention Specialist Barry Weiser said. "This person has had a bad draw time and a bad room for the last three years, so all clues point to him."

Weiser said Public Safety could not release the name of the suspect. He did say that evidence points to someone who is experienced in loading and maintaining an online server.

In addition to the circumstantial evidence, Weiser said that the perpetrator left electronic traces, the computer equivalent of footprints, along the path Public Safety believes was used to get into the housing server.

"I don't think we'll be surprised about where they lead us," Weiser said.

Rockman emphasized that OIT is exhausting every possible option in trying to retrieve the list.

"Hopefully, the list can be found," he said, "and all of the procedures can return to normal."

This is the first time the housing department has encountered a problem of this sort, Rockman said, and OIT is already working to prepare in case the list is lost in the future. Editor's Note: This joke article was in celebration of April 1st.