Students and staff are still recovering from Capital’s latest technical disaster; this time following a complete crash of the Capital University email servers.
The outage started last Friday after the Bexley fire department was called after smoke started appearing from the Capital University email servers. Upon arriving at the scene, the fire department found the servers sparking and starting to engulf in flames.
No one was injured, but the incident resulted in severe damages to the server room and the University having its email system completely wiped and rendered unusable for about a week. Students and staff are just now regaining access to the system.
Bexley firefighter Quentin Thomas said of the image upon arriving at the scene, “It was unlike any fire I had ever seen. I have never, in all my days of firefighting, dealt with a blaze as crazy as that one. It seemed to have a mind of its own. I’m just glad we were able to contain it.”
Bexley fire chief Bill Kai echoed Thomas’ sentiments, stating that “It took all that we had to get that thing under control. After the fire was out I went back to see if I could find what started the fire, maybe a cigarette or something, but I got nothing. All I know is that y’all must have had a lot of emails for those things to combust like they did.”
The crash is directly related to an abundance of student email accounts that were already full of emails. So many accounts had run out of storage that the entire email system at the university was down for several days.
While administration at the university has placed the majority of the blame on spam emails, and students not keeping their university email inboxes clean, students have another, differing perspective.
Students are claiming that the bulk of the emails are not spam emails as the university has suggested, instead, they all point to one name: Capital’s own Jenni Vrabel as being the culprit in the case of excessive emails.
Junior student Brody Wells said of the emails, “They were all from her telling us to delete the spam emails, but when I went to look for them, my inbox was already filled up with stuff from her!”
He went on to say, “She should just leave the spam thing alone; if Capital students want to enter sketchy airpod giveaways in their university emails who are we to say they shouldn’t?”
The University has not provided an updated statement, and it seems that they are sticking with the theory that the bulk of the emails were in fact spam emails, and not emails coming from a university figure.
No matter who the blame truly lies with, this incident is sure to be a reminder to both students and staff alike to stay on top of their inboxes in the future.
