Where are we when you need us?

At around 9:10 am on Thursday, May 7, university life as we know it came to a standstill in many places. UU students and staff discovered just how dependent they are on IT. Workers couldn’t even enter their workspaces because their access cards had stopped working.

Coffee machines only came out of the machines sparingly. The O-Drive was inaccessible, the Wi-Fi was down, and applications like Teams and SPSS were no longer working properly. Students had difficulty accessing their course materials on Brightspace or viewing their schedules on MyTimetable, while faculty members couldn't access their schedules and course materials.

Researchers were deeply concerned about the experiments they had underway. The control room in the Administration Building was temporarily unavailable for emergency alerts from the labs. The university's website pages loaded slowly or not at all, and DUB's website was inaccessible.

Fire
The problems were caused by a major outage triggered by a fire at the NorthC data centre in Almere, which holds key servers for Utrecht University (UU). The outage affected the university so severely that it decided to close entirely on Friday, May 8.

All buildings, with the exception of those housing the faculties of Veterinary Medicine and Medical Sciences, were closed that day. Students and staff were no longer allowed to log in to the university's systems to reduce load as much as possible, which meant they couldn't send emails. It ultimately took over a week for most sites to be back online.

Frustrating
DUB, the independent news and opinion site for students and staff at Utrecht University, was therefore inaccessible for eight days, as systems across the university went down, affecting students, faculty, researchers, and staff. At this most crucial moment, DUB couldn't report on the events, inconveniences, and questions the situation raised, as well as on its underlying causes.

We posted updates on our social media channels, striving to report on the incident as best as we could. We also gathered information for articles that would be published on our website once it was back online. However, the fact that we couldn’t share this information right away was extremely frustrating for us, not to mention potentially harmful for the university community. In a sense, this was a litmus test for DUB’s independence, and it raises several questions.

Many questions
The fire in Almere was a force majeure incident, and it is impressive how everyone — from administrative staff to security, from researchers to faculty, and, most of all, the IT specialists — has poured their time and expertise into getting everything back up and running. The communications department's efforts to provide information during this crisis are also commendable.

Nevertheless, this is also the time to ask a few questions. How could a local fire in a data centre disrupt Utrecht University so profoundly and for so long? Where does UU store its data? How is the backup system organised? Is it a good idea to stop using keys to open the doors? Has “regular tech,” in addition to Big Tech, also become a threat to our freedoms? Was the university's priority list for restarting services and websites accurate?

DUB's independence
Although DUB is not more important than other university services, it is very important to protect critical university journalism. Suppose an even bigger crisis occurs in the future, one in which it will be even more crucial to provide accurate information to the university community, DUB could act as a unifying, critical and informative agent. Hence, the importance of our independent role. Lately, we have been asking ourselves what DUB’s independence really means when its website can go offline so easily.

Smiles, surprise, outrage, recognition
The whole ordeal has since ended without a hitch. No major incidents have occurred. Still, we believe DUB should not go offline for so long ever again. We will campaign hard for this in the near future, and during the evaluations of this crisis, just as many others will learn lessons from this episode. We also plan to set up a secure online backup outside the university’s systems.

But first and foremost, we will resume reporting on the ins and outs of university life and ask all the questions that surfaced as a result of this crisis. I would also like to draw your attention to our interview with the rector of the USC fraternity, which came under fire for spreading a "slut list" shaming female students. This interview went offline almost immediately after publication. I would also like to remind readers that you can follow the University Council election debate via livestream on May 21. The vote will take place between June 1–3.

In addition, DUB's twenty or so columnists will once again shed light on life and work at Utrecht University, and how the university relates to the outside world. Our many young student freelancers will once again be unearthing stories that elicit smiles, surprise, indignation or recognition.

In short, welcome back. Welcome back to DUB.