By: Joe Strupp When the wildfires raging throughout Southern California neared Pepperdine University in Malibu on Sunday, campus officials shut down servers used by all campus Web sites.
Unfortunately, that included the Web site of Graphic, the student newspaper, creating a four-hour disruption when the paper was in the midst of covering the raging fire's impact on students, many of whom were being evacuated and seeking information about university events.
"They just decided to do it, but they didn?t take into account that it would affect the newspaper Web site," said Editor-In-Chief Shannon Kelly. "They said they didn't do it on purpose."
Pepperdine officials could not immediately be reached for comment Tuesday.
Purposely or not, the servers were back in power by Sunday evening, Kelly said, allowing the newspaper to return to coverage that has continued ever since, despite the evacuation of most campus buildings and a cancellation of classes for the past two days.
Kelly said she and three other student journalists have been covering the story with three to four Web updates daily. While she and another student have been reporting from their off-campus homes, two students remain on site at evacuation centers in the gymnasium and cafeteria.
Chris Segal, a senior and strategic planner for the paper, said the students have been pressing for their own off-campus server access, but the university has refused. "The university did not want us to have ad content they could not control," said Segal, who is the son of Jonathan Segal, president of the newspaper division for Freedom Communications. "I'll look to push for our own servers. Hopefully, this will be a push in that direction."
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