On Monday, September 15, Dawson IT staff were doing routine updates, when something catastrophic happened: One of Dawson’s main servers crashed, and many different computer related errors arose around the Dawson campus.
When asked about the incident, IT staff member Mr. Lenis said “There was an internal issue and the servers crashed, causing a lot of problems.” He then assured that they were doing whatever they could to prevent it from happening again. IT staff member Mr. Santiago later added to the matter, when asked about recovering from this crash,“It’s a large operation, because we’re talking about restoring the services that are responsible for all of the things computer-related on campus.”
One of many errors was the keycard readers losing functionality. Multiple students reported not being able to enter the building and being quite frustrated about the matter. Junior Darren Sebek said “I was tardy to class a couple times and it interrupted my schedule a lot.” His experience reflected that of many other students who experienced delays while waiting for the issue to be resolved.
Other students also experienced issues beyond building access, Students recall Wi-Fi errors the Friday before during the school tailgate, and computers in the computer lab being unable to log in, which confirms that the server crash affected more than just the keycards. For a campus that heavily relies on its technology, this incident was more than a minor inconvenience, Mr Santiago even described it as “Catastrophic” and he “hasn’t experienced an issue like this before.”
Dawson’s IT team has been tirelessly working to resolve all issues, and Mr. Santiago explained “We’re actually still working through the fallout of what happened, there’s a lot of things that we’re still trying to get to the bottom of.” The server crash has demonstrated Dawson’s dependence on its technology, and the lengths that the IT department has to go through to keep it intact, so if you see them in the hallways, make sure to thank them for all that they do.
