When Stevens was hit by the late-summer ransomware attack, it was obvious from the get-go that certain aspects of campus operations would have to be prioritized for re-engagement over others. This is naturally unavoidable in a large-scale emergency situation such as the one Stevens faced, as the breadth of what Stevens does on a daily basis is too vast to fully reinitialize within a short amount of time after a catastrophe.
That being said, I have to wonder just how the prioritization for each aspect of the university was decided. Stevens President Nariman Farvardin was asked this question during last Sunday’s Pancakes with the President event, to which he responded that neither was he the proper person nor the event the proper time to ask such a question. He did, however, offer this: the decisions were made by a team of people working together, not an individual.
Teams are great for efficiency, but when teams err it is usually difficult to determine a root cause. That is especially true when your team consists of every Vice President at Stevens and a whole host of other administrators.
In March of this year, The Stute revealed that many Stevens students were being charged lab fees for labs in which no services were provided to them from these fees. These labs include the courses CS 115, E 120, CS 135, and CS 306. Astute observers will notice that this means every single Engineering, Computer Science, and Cybersecurity student (as well as many others) have essentially paid for air. To make matters worse, these courses require students to use a personal laptop, which is something that Stevens does not provide anymore. Also, at least one of these courses (at least when I took it two years ago) requires purchasing a digital homework system for around $40. The lab fees that students have paid did not help cover any of these expenses.
Okay. So, this comes to light in March. Students had known about it for a lot longer than that, but whatever. The Stute published it in March. Great. The school will just stop charging the lab fees, reimburse every current student they can clearly verify was improperly charged, and spend a long time tracking down alumni who were also charged and try to reimburse them to the best of their ability. This is the course of action any reasonable person would take.
This is not the course of action that Stevens took.
It is now September 2019. As of the date this column publishes, it has been 203 days since The Stute published the initial story about these lab fees. Not a single penny has been reimbursed to a single student. No progress has been made on this front at all. An entire year of students has already graduated after the article was published, and they have heard nothing. In the last 203 days, I have accepted two job offers, been elected President of SITTV, signed a lease on an apartment and moved in, and drank about 300 cups of coffee. During that time, as The Stute reported on September 13, Stevens has not done anything to help right the wrong they created. (What have YOU done in the last 203 days while Stevens has sat on wrongfully acquired money? Send your answer to eboard@thestute.com)
When The Stute asked for comment, Provost Christophe Pierre said (according to The Stute) that, “due to the cyberattack, [they] are delayed in finalizing [their] review” and that “no changes could be made to address the situation in time for the 2019-2020 academic year.” These are truly profound claims to make. If I found a wallet on the ground with $98 in it and the person who owned the wallet approached me and asked for their money back, and I then responded by saying I needed more than 203 days to “review” the situation, I would probably be going home with a black eye. Furthermore, the claim that the cyberattack has delayed any decision-making process is completely insulting to the students affected by Stevens’ malpractice. The attack happened in late August. It had already been six months after The Stute’s first article before the attack occurred. From my point of view, that is already a frankly ridiculous delay when the error is so obvious and the solution so apparent. The fact that Pierre has said that there will be no changes for this academic year means that Stevens will see yet another entire class of students graduate without seeing any justice.
This situation is completely unacceptable and downright embarrassing for Stevens. I can think of absolutely no legitimate reason why it should take this long for Stevens to return money that they wrongfully took from students, especially when the Division of Finance had known about the situation “a while” before the March article was published. I am sure of one thing, however: this is not something I will readily forget when Stevens knocks at my door asking for donations after I’ve graduated, and I hope the same is true for every other student who was charged double my monthly utilities payment for nothing and then completely ignored when asking for recompense.
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