Ball State officials said they are watching Purdue University as one graduate and two former students could face charges for hacking into professors’ accounts to change their grades.
The three are accused of changing about 40 grades total by breaking into professors’ offices and installing software, starting in 2008.
Mike Gillilan, Ball State director of student rights and community standards, said the university, as well as many others, are watching the incident at Purdue.
“That is an extraordinarily serious incident with what’s being reported up at Purdue,” Gillilan said.
He said he doesn’t know for sure how administrators would react if something of a similar nature were to happen at Ball State, but said some policy violations would be expected, including misuse of computer technology and theft.
“Given the extent and severity of that, that is really quite serious,” Gillilan said. “I think there are a number of things that would be possible at the top end of our sanctions, for instance suspension, expulsion, revocation of a degree. It’s very possible that two or more of those would be considered, if not implemented.”
Loren Malm, assistant vice president for information technology, said Blackboard logs when changes are made to grades, which helped them deal with a problem similar to Purdue’s a couple years ago.
“We have had a situation where a student was able to obtain a password for a professor and changed their grade,” Malm said. “We were able to detect that situation happening and were able to give the right administrators enough information to determine who it was.”
Ball State does not comment in individual cases of misconduct for privacy reasons.
Malm said Blackboard also secures final grades by sending them to Ball State’s banner. Grades can only be changed by a paper process through the registrar’s office once they’ve been sent to the banner and the submission period closes.
“Not all universities have Blackboard, but most universities today have some learning management system and some student information system,” he said. “I think Ball State does a very good job at how we manage these systems and how we run them and the processes we have in place to first prevent and then detect any kind of thing that would happen along the lines of what happened at Purdue.”
The integrity of the grading system and the reputation of the university are two reasons why Gillilan said grade security is important.
“Students’ grades are used to calculate a GPA, which can have an effect on their financial aid, their transcript, whether or not they get into professional school, how they are viewed or valued as a potential candidate down the road,” he said. “If the system that records and produces reports of those grades can’t be trusted as having integrity and being secured, it devalues students’ grades, which are a demonstration of what they know. Bottom line, it makes everybody look bad. That’s one of many reasons why this incident is being taken so seriously by Purdue and other institutions.”
