by Lexey Burns, Editor-in-Chief
Luc Roy, Chief Information Officer at Laurentian University said that “nothing was misbehaving” in IT after allegations that course material over a variety of different programs were suddenly deleted last week.
“I remember there was a tweet over last weekend about access being removed or something being removed, so we looked at it immediately and there was nothing out of the ordinary,” Roy said,
Roy confirmed that IT did not “remove any access from anyone” but cannot comment on the behaviours of people who use the systems due to confidentiality laws.
Roy is unsure of the exact number of how many courses were affected, but said the actions done on D2L, by professor or student, is “something we don’t monitor. We probably could have a log but we’re not going to disclose that because that’s confidential.”
“Whatever happened it must have been the behaviour of again whoever is responsible for the course,” Roy said.
Roy says he won’t acknowledge whose fault this is.
“I don’t want to put the blame on anyone, I just know the systems are working as they should be. It’s not an action from IT. It’s not an action from D2L because all of that is sound. It would have been an action of could be a professor, could be something else, but… we cannot disclose because that’s confidential.”
Roy said that if something was accidentally deleted there are steps taken to restore the information removed, but that is typically done through either the dean, professor, or chair of the program.
“IT manages the system, doesn’t manage the content,” Roy said.
Roy explained that the course will open up a week before the semester starts and the course closes two weeks after the semester ends, with specific courses being an exception. “There are some courses… that are a little bit different, they can be managed differently.”
When asked about the redirections of the recently cut program webpages, Roy said “this is news to me.”
“We haven’t changed any configurations so that’s again I’m surprised that something like that would have happened.”
He said that the external website’s technology is managed by IT but the content is managed by Digital Strategies.
“In fact, I am actually a part of an exchange right now of all the restructuring and how it’s going to be configured so I can tell you that nothing has been configured yet… We’re working on that now,” Roy said.
IT has been affected by Laurentian’s restructuring, losing both the project manager and admin assistant positions.