What began as a typical December morning quickly turned into a months-long crisis for Baker University. On Dec. 24, 2024, the University discovered what President Jody Fournier described as “suspicious activity in different files and pieces of data,” prompting an immediate shutdown of its network systems, including the student portal, email and records software.
The outage left all students, faculty and staff without access to grades, transcripts or registration systems from Dec. 2024 to Aug. 2025.
“We came in and nothing worked for us,” said Registrar Ramie Nation, recalling the day it began. “We weren’t able to use our phones, our email, we couldn’t even log into our computers. We assumed it was a network issue. When we came back [for the spring 2025 semester], it still wasn’t up.”
As the outage continued, Nation’s office discovered that a large portion of student data had been corrupted. Baker’s outdated student information system was no longer supported by its vendor, which forced the university to rebuild the system from scratch and migrate to a new, cloud-based platform.
“We had no idea what data was corrupted, how much was available, how much would come over,” she said. “They had to bring in data architects to rebuild everything.”
For students like Dylan Price, the outage was an obstacle. “That was a really inconvenient time because that’s when REU (Research Experiences for Undergraduates) programs started up,” Price said. “I needed a transcript for those applications… I had to pull a lot of strings and make a faux transcript just to apply.”
Faculty members also scrambled to adapt. Professor John Richards said the disruption was during “one of the most interesting interterms” he’d ever taught.
“We’re so dependent on technology. I couldn’t print anything, couldn’t access grades, everything had to be adjusted,” Richards said. “I still don’t really know what the problem was because I don’t know if there’s ever been an official thing [sent out].”
While the systems outage caused major disruptions, many students and faculty say that the university’s lack of clear communication compounded the issue. For weeks after the portal went dark, updates from the university were sparse, vague and filtered through many layers of administrative approval, leaving campus confused as to what had actually happened.
“I don’t think that that was ever clearly communicated to anybody,” said Dylan Price. “We just kept being told they were ‘working on it,’ and there are [only] so many times you can hear that before it starts to feel like no one knows what’s happening.”
Professor Richards said something similar, saying faculty were largely left in the dark. “We were told that it was down and they couldn’t talk about it because there was an investigation,” he said. “There were rumors all over the place, but no real information. I didn’t know what to tell my students.”
As a result, misinformation spread quickly and frustration grew. President Jody Fournier, who took office months after the outage began, acknowledged that communication was one of Baker’s biggest failures during the event.
“People were so focused around the clock on rebuilding that it was easy to think, ‘I need more info before I can put more out,’ rather than just telling people what you know,” Fournier said. “I’ve seen no evidence that anyone was trying to hold back information.”
Fournier says that the university was “victimized”, but emphasized that “there’s nothing to indicate that any theft of information or fraud occurred – just that the information had been accessed.” The IT department and registrar’s office worked around the clock, even through Christmas, to rebuild what was lost.
Since starting at Baker, Fournier has made transparency a top priority, hosting town halls and promising regular updates about the university’s progress. However, President Jody Fournier confirmed that the university does not plan to release an official after-action report detailing what went wrong.
“We will not publish an after-action [report] because of the confidential nature of the information that’s involved,” Fournier said. “What I will commit to is continuing to have conversations with Baker Orange, town halls, forums… to tell you what I’ve learned.”
According to Nation and Fournier, with the help of outside IT experts, the implementation of data governance and the cloud-based nature of the new SIS, students’ information will be much more secure than before.
Nation said she hopes that Baker develops a better communication plan in case of future emergencies. “I hope the university learns from this, too, and one, makes changes to the way we handle our systems and our data but two, rebuilds a communication plan and an emergency plan around something like this for the future.”
Fournier echoed that statement, promising continued transparency. “I’m sorry,” he said. “It’s unacceptable… But we’re going to learn from it. We’re going to improve. We’re going to get stronger.”
