On Friday, all Tufts students were informed that their affiliation with the University was terminated and that their e-mail accounts would shortly be eliminated. A computer hardware glitch generated the erroneous e-mail, which gave students a November deadline to find an alternative e-mail service, and college to attend.
The message was sent when a chip malfunctioned on the system that controls a large database of student, faculty, and staff names, removing all student names from the database. When a Tufts Computing and Communications Services (TCCS) program conducted a scheduled search for the names of students who were eligible to have accounts, it did not come up with any names. The failed search prompted the program to send an e-mail to students informing them that their accounts would be closed.
While TCCS officials were able to resolve the hardware problem, employees spent the rest of the day trying to solve the mass confusion caused by the e-mail.
TCCS identified the problem early Friday, when it began to receive an abundance of phone calls from students insisting that that they were, in fact, still affiliated with the University. Some students called as early as 8 a.m.
"My parents are still paying tuition," said sophomore Rachel Narrow. "I don't think they'd be too happy if they found out I wasn't affiliated with the University."
TCCS employees assigned a team of technicians to fix the problem, which necessitated replacing a piece of hardware. "When we do have a problem, we want to jump on it and fix it as soon as possible," said Kathleen Cummings, associate director of training and documentation for TCCS.
To clarify the situation, TCCS sent an e-mail to University support staff including cultural centers, student services, and the TCCS helpdesk. The TCCS helpdesk set up an automated message explaining that students with e-mail accounts on Opal, Emerald, and Coral were sent false expiration notices, and that the warnings should be ignored. The e-mail had stated that students should call the helpdesk if they believed the message was erroneous.
Later in the day, TCCS sent an e-mail to students explaining the problem, and all students in campus dorm rooms received automated phone messages saying that the e-mails were false and apologizing for the confusion. "When we've confused our largest customer base, we're pretty concerned," Cummings said. "The last thing we wanted to do was add to the confusion. Our strategy was really to bring clarity."
If a termination e-mail had been legitimate, the TCCS e-mail told students they would receive an additional message.
The hardware error was located in a failed chip in the motherboard that corrupted the database. Tufts uses an Academic Technology Account Management System (ATAMS) to update local account information, expire accounts, and create new ones when someone's enrollment or employment status changes.
Tufts has been using an automatic database to determine eligibility for services and benefits since 1996, and officials say were no previous problems. "The fact that it ran flawlessly for so long is amazing," Cummings said.
The system allows Tufts to integrate many of its business processes and create an online directory. Before the system was implemented, changes in a student or employee's University affiliation required significant amounts of paperwork. The automated system expedites the business process and also increases its security.
Enrollment and employment status is sent to the database nightly through an automatic feed. This allows the University to keep a current list of which students and faculty are entitled to certain benefits because of their University affiliation.
TCCS officials said they were sorry for the confusion caused by the hardware problem. "Its regrettable that what's really a small hardware problem, ended up causing such total confusion for the students," Cummings said. "That's really the last thing we wanted."
