TO THE CAMPUS COMMUNITY

Many students, faculty and staff were surprised and dismayed Thursday afternoon when the university's e-mail system went off-line, along with much of the capability to communicate the latest information about the impact of Hurricane Isabel on the campus.

I first want to assure everyone that the university information systems were not damaged by the hurricane. Indeed, the reason OIT took the system off line was to prevent damage from potential flooding. Most of the university's main servers are located in the A.V. Williams complex, which is located in a flood plain.

To prepare for the worst possible case, we took those servers off line yesterday afternoon. We were able to put up a temporary home page on another server that provided updated information about campus status, but we did not provide sufficient information about the e-mail system and other servers. The Home Page was back on line late last night and is fully functional now, and most e-mail services have now been restored.

We recognize that the university's Web and e-mail systems are critical tools for communication within the campus community, particularly during emergencies. We will take all necessary steps to ensure that these systems operate seamlessly at all times in the future.

We thank everyone for their patience.

Sincerely,
Mark Henderson
Interim VP and Chief Information