I was having a casual breakfast with one of my friends in the Engineering school when I first heard about this infamous e-mail that went out in late August of this year containing highly personal information about all 5,000-plus undergraduates in the college.

He had heard it from a friend of a friend, and I immediately asked if I could have some of his friends’ phone numbers. I worked my way through until I had a copy of the initial e-mail as well as the apology sent out shortly afterward. It was a weekend when I found out, so I started calling administrators in Engineering at home.

Following this situation, the department curtailed the ability of administrators to add attachments to mass e-mails and also required an associate dean to pre-approve all mass e-mails – both steps in the right direction.