Santa Monica College's Website Offline

Has anyone else noticed that he or she can't access the www.smc.edu website? The server has been down for two days now. Doesn't Santa Monica College use mirrored servers? Or is the server up and running, but the website is for some reason not on the server? Does SMC even have a 24/7 technical support person? eCollege, SMC's third party distance education vendor, allegedly does with its SMC Help Desk.

I did a ping request on the www.smc.edu website and got back the following: "Address does not seem to exist." Here's the screenshot:



I also digged a little deeper. Here's a screenshot of the results:



I tried a DNS Query and met with equally unsuccessful results. Here's the screenshot:



The last day to drop a class was yesterday. Is SMC going to grant an extension to drop or will anyone who couldn't access their login page going to receive a failing grade? I wonder who is in charge of this? Admissions? If a student fails a class he or she was unable to drop, then he or she would have to re-enroll in the course for a second go around to remove the failing grade. Of course the student would have to pay the course fee a second time as well. Double the enrollment at double the cost. Perhaps this is SMC's creative way of generating enrollment recovery and revenue streams for its ailing school.

Perhaps the SMC Board of Trustees should spend less time in closed door secret sessions mulling over how to blackmail me to drop my California Public Records Act case and more time dealing with legitimate concerns such as having a functioning online Student Self Service System during their self-imposed withdrawal deadline. In any event, I'm sure there will be a lot of upset students when the school opens its doors this morning. I recommend making a screenshot of the downed SMC website for your records. I sure did!

-- Des Manttari,
Editor-in-Chief,
Phoenix Genesis

(c) 2006: Phoenix Genesis/MBS LP

Feel free to link or print this; just include the SAVE SMC URL: http://savesmc.blogspot.com/

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