Law Schools

Law School Braces For Finals With No Internet

A hacker attack has jeopardized connectivity at the law school and people are freaking out.

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This may come as a surprise to you guys, but Rutgers-Camden has some issues. It’s not just the continually sagging U.S. News ranking (currently sitting at 102), or that the school’s inability to get over the hump landed it in an ongoing merger[1] with Rutgers-Newark (ranked 87) that even the Rutgers-Newark leadership thinks could sink both like a stone. It’s not even that Rutgers-Camden is located in Camden, though that’s trouble enough.[2]

No, it’s that the school has some serious concerns about whether or not they can even have students take their finals via laptop. And it turns out Rutgers-Newark is just as screwed.[3]

In any event, the problem at both Rutgers campuses these days is not about run-of-the-mill crime, but cybercrime. At the end of March, the University proper got crippled by a severe DDoS attack, the third such attack since November of last year. To date, no one has blamed these attacks on The Interview, because no one’s had an interview at Rutgers-Camden since 2007. Seriously though, the FBI is on the case but has failed to drum up a culprit or motive and that’s just emboldened the attacker to keep coming back to the well.

Anyway, apparently the Rutgers Law campuses pipe their Internet through the central servers in New Brunswick, and even though the techies there may be “sprung from cages on information superhighway 9,” they haven’t figured out how to restore full service after some 9-year-old Minecraft devotee blew up their server. And thus the law students slugging it out in Camden and Newark have had partial to no connectivity to the Interwebs for almost a month.

At this point, let’s take an aside to recall that this is a school selling its merger with a “Holodeck” that I’m pretty sure takes some serious bandwidth:

That’s all the “Holodeck” is?!? To boldly video conference where no one has video conferenced before. To be the basis of a media campaign I’d have at least hoped for the “creepy CNN correspondent” technology. Even that’s not really a hologram, but at least it makes for something interesting. And you could have Tupac teach all your classes.[4]

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Obviously responding to a random, competent cyberattack is a time-consuming endeavor — Sony was so f**ked by an attack it accidentally greenlit a Paul Blart: Mall Cop sequel — but keeping students walled off from cat GIFs for a month is cruel and unusual.

But now it’s Finals Week, and this outage is starting to get serious because the school isn’t making any promises that they’ll be able to administer exams digitally. From Rutgers-Camden Assistant Dean Ed Rentezelas:

The main technical issue revolves around accessing the University’s websites (including the law school page) from locations off-campus – which will make downloading exams and accessing your course webpages/materials difficult. Similarly, the current technical issues will make accessing past exams, course webpages, etc., more difficult from off-campus locations. Therefore, please consider downloading any material while you are preparing for exams to your local computer in case the technical issues continue.

Now some people are freaking out about this, because law students have three modes: drinking, crying, and freaking out; but the school deserves a little bit of credit for getting ahead of this thing. Like their counterparts at the University of Maryland, Rutgers-Newark is getting proactive and coming up with a plan, which is commendable. I’m assuming from the email that the school thinks students will be able to get online once they reach campus, which isn’t so bad. And if they can’t, well, it may stun the whipper-snappers out there, but these “Bluebook” things actually work pretty well. In fact, many of us used to use “pen” and “paper” for more than just a signature. It’s true! Once you get used to writing margin notes that say stuff like “Jump to the insert on page 12 here,” you’ll be fine.

That said, everything comes back to this Holodeck. Here’s a slick Internet-based technological gimmick that the school made the centerpiece of their media blitz to sell kids on poor Camden before it thought about investing in the actual Internet. A specific attack may be unpredictable, but — and I know this is a novel idea — schools can also build a secure, working infrastructure before an attack. Remember this isn’t even the first time Rutgers has had to tell students “oops, we don’t have enough Internet for exams.”

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And yet… Holodeck. There may never be a more poignant encapsulation of law school spending priorities than this.

Good luck Rutgers! You may or may not have access to Exam4, but remember it could always be worse.

(You know the drill: the whole email from the dean is on the next page.)


[1] A merger where they maintain both campuses and have “co-deans.” Note to Justice Alito, Rutgers is doing more to undermine traditional marriage than the gays.
[2] There was this great certifiable lunatic I once knew who told me just what happens when you accidentally pull off the freeway in Camden. As he told it, he didn’t get 4 blocks from the off-ramp before the police pulled him over and asked, “What the hell are you doing here?!?” Before cobbling together any response, the cop advised him to drive as fast as he could the other direction back to the freeway. “Run the lights! It’s fine! Just go!” the cop advised. Whether the haste this porcine Cerberus preached was warranted or not, this guy lived to see another day.
[3] Indeed, this article was almost complete when I decided I couldn’t keep working without some sort of drink. So I took a trip to a local watering hole for an “eye opener” and against all odds my undercover Rutgers-Newark source happened to be standing right there. Huzzah! Exactly the person I needed to see before this went to press. Anyway, it turns out Rutgers-Newark may be better at law schoolin’ but it’s not a lick better at technology.
[4]“‘And I ain’t worried bout a damn thang, with unconditional love.’ As you can see from your casebooks, this lacks consideration and is an unenforceable gratuitous offer.”

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