Faculty and staff email systems down all week

By Melissa Boyd (Whetstone staff)

Imagine waking up late, quickly getting dressed and rushing to class.

Then you run straight up to the door to see a small Post-It note, “Class Canceled.”

This happened to freshman Khadija Mitchell last week. Her professor emailed the class to say class was canceled the night before, but no one received the email.

The email system for faculty and staff had been down since March 16.

“I was pretty frustrated because I had rushed and I didn’t have to,” Mitchell said. “Then later, I tried to communicate with another professor but I had to figure out office hours and work out schedules so I can meet with her.”

Mitchell said she waited the entire week for one assignment because the teacher was waiting to post it online.

“I also had another professor who couldn’t access her PowerPoint slides because of it,” she said. “But she had printed copies prior. Good teachers work through any problems.”

Jody Sweeney, chief information officer, said there was a “catastrophic power outage.”

The college’s Internet runs on a UPS, which means there are two arrays in the battery (pictured).

 

 

“If the city of Dover were to shut us down, we’d still be able to run on the batteries until the run-time ran out,” he said. “Our email system is a database, which doesn’t react well to complete losses of power.”

Sweeney said that last January there was a diagnosis for the UPS to be repaired. The repair day was March 19, three days too late.

“Batteries are now online,” he said. “We still have one array of batteries bad, but we’ve already ordered the new batteries and we should be fine until then.”

After the repair, IT’s main focus was restoring all of the emails so that no emails were lost, Sweeney said.

“We were worried about students who might have sent in a test but the professors never receiving it,” he said. “After the restoration took place, the professors and the students would have proof that the students actually did email the test and don’t receive lower scores.”

The email system was restored all the way back to March 2, which means emails that might have been deleted prior to that are restored and marked as “new,” as if they had never been opened.

Senior Bianca Bailey said she had an issue with the email problem because she had a senior portfolio due.

“[The teacher] was very understanding about not getting it,” she said. “But it was frustrating.”

Bailey, an R.A., said there were complications for the R.A.s and R.D.s because of the email.

“As an R.A., you have to send around reports,” she said. “But the R.D.s weren’t receiving them so we did everything through calls and texts. It was a big hindrance.”

Dr. Steve Groccia, an assistant professor of physical education, said the email system being down all week had its obvious complications.

“The greatest challenge was getting in contact with two student teachers who I needed to coordinate site visits with,” he said. “Fortunately, I’m a smart phone user and I had their emails so I used my home email to get in touch with them and coordinate my visits.”

He said the daily contact he has with his students through email also faltered because the system was down, whether that contact includes reminders or submitting assignments.

“I just had them print hard copies and I was lenient on timeliness,” he said. “I wasn’t able to send reminders, but fortunately everyone was looking at their syllabi and remembering. I think people don’t realize how dependent we are becoming with this technology. I like, though. It forced me to be personal again.”

Assistant nursing professor Rebecca Benson said that the email problem complicated things for her too.

“It caused delays,” she said. “It made us appreciated having email when it is up and running.”

She said that her class just adapted and adjusted to the change.

“It wasn’t necessarily a bad thing to adapt,” she said. “It led to even more respect for the burdens that our IT personnel are carrying.”