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Epiphany server crashes

The staff of Epiphany is asking for students who submitted a piece of work on or after Nov. 21 to resubmit their information. Due to a server crash, Epiphany lost some of their information.

Epiphany is a literary journal for nontraditional students. Submission categories include short fiction, flash fiction, nonfiction and poetry. After they are turned in, each submission is judged through a rubric, and the highest-scored are selected for Epiphany. The upcoming issue also includes a “MultiCultural and Diversity” section that was open to all students, designed for students who want to share their unique cultural backgrounds or have diverse ways of living. All of the submissions were due on Dec. 2, and only the ones that were turned in on or after Nov. 21 were lost.

“It gave us all a headache,” said the assistant managing editor, Beth Carver. “We are still trying to figure out what was wrong; we don’t know why it happened. On Nov. 21, the system no longer was forwarding submissions . . .”

On Dec. 2, a student mentioned in class that the page was down, which is when the Epiphany staff realized they weren’t receiving the submission e-mails from the students.

“On Dec. 10, the documents got to us, but the information was gone.”

Staff members were able to recover the submissions themselves, but the information for the writers was lost. The names of the authors were submitted separately from the pieces of work themselves, therefore only the information was lost. The Epiphany staff must now match the submissions with the people who wrote them.

To fix this problem, a notice was posted on the Epiphany website telling students to resubmit their information, including their names, the names of the pieces they submitted and the categories the pieces were submitted in. An e-mail was also sent through the Nontraditional Student Center.

“Other than that, we are trying to get word of mouth out,” said web manager Michelle Paul.

With students resubmitting their information, the staff hopes to reconnect the authors with the stories.

“We may find submissions that were lost, but we are hoping that won’t happen,” Carver said.

Students who do not resend their information might end up having their work removed from Epiphany.

“We might have to; there isn’t another way to get a hold of them,” Paul said.

Despite that, all of the submissions have already been judged, and the staff knows which ones are going into this Epiphany issue.

“We had this kind of problem last year; we may go back to e-mail submissions,” Carver said. That would include students only sending in their documents through e-mail with a cover letter. “It would skip the middle step,” Carver said.

Despite having to find the information for all the submissions, Paul said she is positive Epiphany will come out on schedule. The Epiphany staff will hold a release party Jan. 20 at 3 p.m. in Ballroom C in the Shepherd Union Building.

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