Students Go Missing In Internet Directory

The names and contact listings of 4,250 students disappeared
from the online directory last week and were replaced by employment
information. For more than 48 hours, the glitch made it possible
for anyone accessing the directory to discover which Columbia
students were employed by the Federal Work-Study
Program—leading many students to question just how protected
the University keeps its records.

The listings disappeared from the directory Monday afternoon and
were replaced Tuesday with the employment information. AcIS
restored Columbia students’ contact information and hid the
employment information by Wednesday afternoon; for Barnard
students, the information stayed online through Thursday.

Walter Bourne, assistant director of AcIS, said that the source
of the glitch was a mistake made during a transition to a new Human
Resources system. AcIS usually marks students’ employment
information “private” in the directory’s
underlying database, so that such information will not show up in
the directory. But in the transition to the new system, AcIS
employees forgot to mark the records, leaving them publicly
available.

From athletic stars to political club leaders to the student
council president, students disappeared from the directory. When
they returned, a Columbia College student usually listed as living
in Hogan Hall and studying physics had become “Title:
Work-study Stipend Nevis Labs.” A teacher’s assistant
who is a doctoral student in the political science department went
from “Student, Graduate School of Arts and Sciences” to
“Teaching Fellow.”

Some students worried that other information kept by the
University could go public because of a similar mistake. “I
think it’s weird because we, as students, think we are
protected by the University,” said Heather Wollin, CC
’05, whose employment information was accidentally listed.
“We think all our information is protected, even though we
give it out freely to the University.”

Wollin pointed out that Columbia’s online directory
information is publicly accessible, whereas those of some other
schools are accessible only by members of the university community.
“It’s unsettling to have such private info
publicized,” she said.

But Bourne said that while he believes that student employment
information “is not considered public or
‘directory’ information,” it is not possible that
a similar mistake would lead to the display of more private
information.

“In general, sensitive information such as financial aid
information is not given to AcIS in the directory information
feeds, so it cannot be displayed,” Bourne said. “In
addition to just not having sensitive data, protecting any
sensitive information that is in our databases is one of our
highest priorities.”