Since September 15th, 2022, students and staff across the district have been experiencing the effects of internet issues. As a result, the staff has changed their passwords twice, which has led to rumors of the cause of the issues. One of the main rumors about the source of the lack of internet is that the school district was hacked. 

While some may believe this was the main reason for all of the internet related problems, the school district assures it was not.

¨According to Mike Vondran, a district spokesman, the outages were caused by an issue with the district’s server, and specialists have been working on it throughout the weekend. He said the internet was anticipated to be up shortly. The outage is not the result of a hack, the district said Friday,¨ Quad City Times reporter Olivia Allen said. 

Although the district has made statements claiming that it was just a server issue, some students are still skeptical about the cause. West High School senior, Madison Flores, is one of them, and she finds herself wondering if the internet going down was really just from a server issue.

“I’ve heard rumors around [how other schools] have been getting hacked recently. (…) I feel like they’re covering it up just so we aren’t [worrying] and can get back to schedule when really this could be a potential problem,” stated Flores. 

West is no stranger to having internet issues, though. Students who went to West last year may remember the internet issues the school had around the ISASP. The school even switched internet providers over the summer, so is this something that should be a problem in the future? Teachers and staff are saying: probably not. 

“It shouldn’t be [a big problem in the future]. Usually the district has a backup [plan] (…) and maybe it just didn’t work out this time,” said West High School librarian, Jennifer Kizer.

Having no wifi at school may be a bummer, but things should be running normal soon!