Editor’s note: This article was initially published in The Daily Gazette, Swarthmore’s online, daily newspaper founded in Fall 1996. As of Fall 2018, the DG has merged with The Phoenix. See the about page to read more about the DG.
At approximately 3:14 p.m. E.T. on July 30, 2017, Swarthmore students on the official-reserved-students listserv received a pressing message from what appears to be the email of Swarthmore College’s registrar, Martin Warner. Mr. Warner is, according to his swarthmore.edu profile, “responsible for the maintenance and integrity of all academic records and student data reporting.”
The email in question has been reproduced below.
The origins of this email, furthermore referred to as “[students] Sharples can have good food now,” currently remain unknown.
The Daily Gazette reached out to Mr. Warner for a written statement immediately following the email’s arrival and received an automatic “away” message. The email read: “I am currently away from the office. In the meantime, many questions can be answered by reading the Registrar’s Office website.”
The office website provided no answers.
“The most curious part of the whole thing was that the email appears to have been authored by Martin Warner’s own gmail account,” said Luke Barbano ’18, one of the many students who received and forwarded “[students] Sharples can have good food now.”
UPDATE (10:53 p.m. July 30, 2017): SCCS has since identified the culprit who sent “[students] Sharples can have good food now,” claiming that they have made their identification with 95% certainty.
“Please note that the mwarner1 account was not compromised. Any claims of a stolen password are false,” noted Wistan Chou ’19, of SCCS, in a written statement to The Daily Gazette and The Phoenix.
SCCS is working with ITS to resolve this issue and has stated that, for privacy reasons, will not reveal the name of the sender.
Photo courtesy of swarthmore.edu
There’s no way this was him. Sending emails as if they were from legit accounts is not difficult: what’s more concerning is the fact that whoever sent this was able to send it to the entire student body listserv from a fake account.
good good 🙂