THUNDER BAY – Lakehead University has extended its reading week by four days after a cyber attack left students and faculty without access to key online services for several days.
Students, who normally would return from reading week Monday, had called for the step in recent days, saying their academic futures were at risk.
Lakehead announced Saturday that classes will now not resume until Friday, Feb. 26.
The school also announced that several essential web-based services, including its website, email system, Zoom, myInfo portal, and D2L online learning platform had been restored Saturday morning.
Whether the news will mean an extension to the university’s academic year is uncertain, the university said, ahead of discussions with faculties and the university senate.
Lakehead announced Tuesday its servers had been targeted by a cyber attack, and in response shut down all on-campus computers.
That resulted in several days without access to the university's instructional and communications services for most students.
To Samantha Desroches, a social work student at Lakehead’s Orillia campus, it was crucial to extend the break, even if it does mean a slightly longer school year.
Desroches launched an online petition Thursday imploring the university to make up for reading week days affected by the outages. The petition had garnered over 5,000 signatures by Saturday, and was supported by the Lakehead University Student Union (LUSU).
Students are “100 per cent dependent” on web-based tools, she said, with the university offering mostly online instruction due to the pandemic.
The inability to access those tools left many unable to complete key work or even communitate with professors during reading week.
Students rely on the break both to recharge and to catch up ahead of exams and mid-term assignments, she said, and losing out on much of that time was a major stressor for her peers.
“I’ve been reading through the comments on the survey, and they hurt my heart, to be honest,” she said.
Student and LUSU president Sukhraj Grewal agreed the situation had a significant impact.
“This is taking a toll on many not only academically but also on their mental health,” he said Friday. “Students are stressing now, because should the winter break not be extended, we’ll be backlogged by a week or two.”
In addition to the extended break, LUSU is also pushing for expanded academic and mental health support services, Grewal said.
The student union will also seek other accommodations, such as reinstating the pass/fail option or extending the late withdrawal option beyond exams.
Even with the break extended and services restored, the student union remains concerned about what information could have been compromised in the attack.
“Currently we don’t have details on what info has been accessed," said Grewal. "We can only hope for the best that no personal information, especially [financial] account information, gets leaked.”
The university has engaged cyber security investigators and is working with local, provincial, and federal police to investigate the attack.
Editor’s Note: Ian Kaufman is a former president of the Lakehead University Student Union.
