YC Students Launch Independent Web Server

Administration's Lagging Impetus for Autonomous Server

Upon reaching an impasse in negotiations with the administration over Internet policy, the Yeshiva University Computer Society recently unveiled an initiative to establish an independent World Wide Web server to satisfy the computing and educational requirements of the University student populace. Continued administrative indifference to the essential computing needs of the University compelled the decision to break ranks with the existing YU server, according to YUCS officials.

The nascent student-operated server is nearing completion according to YUCS co-vice president Ben Sandler. "It is functional but not accessible. We expect the final details to be resolved soon."

YUCS president Menachem Berkowitz reported that his society had contacted "an outside source, who will remain nameless, and got an electrical and network socket. We will be plugging in a computer obtained independently and reestablishing a server similar to 501 before it was shut down by the administration a few months ago."

Repeated meetings with Yeshiva College Dean Norman Adler over the course of the previous few months since the University's Department of Management Information Systems decided to pull the plug on the previous student-operated Internet server known as 501 yielded little in the way of results satisfactory to YUCS. Adler maintained that unsubstantiated allegations of student hacking from 501 branded the Computer Society and its leadership "irresponsible" and precluded granting the students server privileges on the University site.

The matter came to a head during a November 5 meeting between Adler and YUCS representatives Sandler and Joshua Yuter. Adler announced that no progress could be made toward resolution of the server request in light of the resignation of David Rosen from the post of Director of Yeshiva University Public Relations. YUPR has traditionally retained nominal control over the operation of the YU server. Adler reasoned that no decisions can be made by this Department until a successor is found for Rosen.

Computer Society co-vice president Shmuel Reinman, upset at the connection suggested by Adler, stated, "Are we to believe that YUPR can no longer make any decisions or operate at all until Rosen is replaced? The idea that no decisions can be made about the server which is only slightly related to YUPR, until it is fully staffed is ridiculous. Maybe [the Department of] Admissions should not have accepted any new students this year since three-quarters of its staff resigned. This is obviously just another effort to deny students what they need educationally based on a very flimsy excuse."

Reinman also noted that in the last Committee on Implementation of Technological Policy, known colloquially as the High Tech Committee, meeting that Rosen attended before resigning, the former YUPR Director observed that "a look at our [Yeshiva University's] web page would make you think that we are a university without faculty and students." Reinman asserted that this was reflective of Rosen's wish to expand University Internet services, not limit them as he contended Adler was currently advocating.

The November 5 meeting between Adler and YUCS yielded a conclusive Computer Society conviction for the first time that organizational interests would not be met through negotiation with the administration. They believed that they had been "strung along" for three months with assurances of progress that the administration had never intended to fulfill. For YUCS, a line in the sand had been breached when Adler remarked, "Why don't you guys get AOL pages?"

Sandler found "the comment to be insulting. The Dean continued to insist that we were responsible for a hacking episode we had absolutely no involvement with. He continued to fail to recognize that the server we were proposing was about programming and high end computing that cannot be done on AOL. This comment showed that he is really, really having trouble understanding the nature of modern computing, or more likely, does not wish to understand."

Adler's commitment to "seeing what [he] can do about getting a decision" on the matter of the YUCS server proposal at the next High Tech meeting proved to be inadequate for the Computer Society. YUCS produced its trump card independent server scheme and demonstrated that it too had some leverage. Adler, for his part, expressed his preference "that the student server be at YU's central site," but made no assurances that a mechanism for attaining this end might be made available imminently.

Berkowitz wished to emphasize that YUCS decided to "set up an independent server only because administrative red tape made our task impossible. We'd prefer to be on the school server but that does not appear to be possible any time soon. The purpose of the new server is to provide students with the resources that the University has chosen to deny us."