If you're a Ball State University student from Hamilton County who supports Ron Paul and has a fairly advanced practical understanding of computer programming, I probably hate you. If you also answered a survey from an IP address within the university network, then I definitely hate you. It's not because of your politics or where you're from, but because of the way you used your knowledge to mess with something important because of an apparent lack of anything better to do.
Things were going along just perfectly last week. Sure, the quick-spreading upper respiratory infection that seems to come just about this time every year had infiltrated my group of friends, but that was expected. A hacking cough and fever are relatively manageable when the rest of the world is right side up. Then, out of nowhere, thousands of things went wrong all at once.
To be exact, 7,711 things went wrong.
That dauntingly high figure represents the number of times someone vandalized a Daily News political survey with the same set of answers. As you might have guessed, that person was the aforementioned Hamilton County import who supports Ron Paul. If you fit that description and you didn't tamper with the survey, I'm sorry for saying I hate you. Fact is, the mere mention of Ron Paul or anything else contained in those 7,711 responses tends to irritate me lately.
Some background: I'm responsible for the short survey (at tinyurl.com/dnsurvey) the DN asked the Ball State community to fill out. Take it if you'd like, and thanks to the few thousand people who already have. It will be put to good journalistic use early next week.
Back to vandalism. Since the survey started, I've been periodically checking on it like a nervous first-time father checks his baby's crib at night. Like the father, I've probably been overdoing it, but it's just out of a desire to make sure nothing big goes wrong. By Monday, the frequency of the checks slowed to once or twice per day. That's when I noticed the number of respondents more than doubled overnight Sunday.
My first, innocent reaction was "Awesome! People really care about politics and took the time to take the survey!" It was almost immediately followed by the realization that there was no way more than 7,000 people had suddenly started to give a damn between 10 p.m. Sunday and Monday morning. I soon discovered thousands of repeated responses submitted every five or six seconds and realized I would have to delete them all one by one for the survey to be accurate. I wasn't in a good mood for the rest of the night, to say the least.
I'm sure the less cynical of you out there are wondering if it could have been a computer glitch. As I mentioned before, the responses were submitted about five seconds apart, which leads me to believe some sort of program was created because no one can click that fast. I still thought it could have been an innocent mistake until a co-worker at the DN informed me someone called inquiring about how we were tracking the survey, in particular if we were using IP addresses to do it. That sealed the deal for me; a guilty conscience or the thrill of vandalism forced the perpetrator to revisit the scene of the crime to make sure people knew what was done.
I've fixed the problem and handed it off to the BSU Computer Security Response Team for inappropriate use of the information technology available to students because it seems the IP address is part of Ball State's network. Unfortunately, the problem isn't over with because there's a bigger issue at hand. Are there really Ball State students, or any people for that matter, out there who have the time to create what I can only assume is a program to repeatedly answer surveys?
Two weeks ago I wrote about apathy on campus, and I still think it is the greatest problem we as young people face today. I've been forced to reprioritize the other items on that problems list so that wasting time and effort to accomplish nothing at all is second. That's what the vandal did, and I pity him for it.
Hate and pity aren't emotions I'm fond of, so let's make a deal: From now on, I pledge to keep negative emotions at bay so long as you all pledge to stop acting like petulant little children who either don't care about anything or who get their rocks off with vandalism.
Write to Logan at lmbraman@bsu.edu
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