On Thursday afternoon, Boise State University sent out a campus-wide email alerting students and faculty to an international outage of the educational platform Canvas after its parent company was hacked. The message also urged recipients not to attempt logging into the platform.
Hours later, Boise State cancelled all final exams set for Friday and explained they would not be rescheduled. For some, it meant a free pass. But for many students, it meant a lot more.
"I spent around seven to eight hours doing practice problems, going over the material to just get an email that says that exam was cancelled," said Ivan Markevych, my classmate finishing his junior year studying cellular and molecular biology with a minor in physics.
He was given the opportunity to schedule his exam anytime throughout the week, and planned to take it on Friday. For him, the exam could have meant the difference between a B and a B+.
"I got really frustrated, because I don’t think that's fair – neither for people who already took the exam and for people who were about to take the exam," said Markevych.
Faculty at the school are practically immobilized from grading and accessing past assignments or exams. Thursday’s statement encourages students to reach out to instructors for information regarding outstanding assignments.
Disclosure: Jaxon Holmes is a BSPR newsroom intern and a current junior at Boise State.
