Esther Mejia and Kelly Merchant had a question Friday afternoon for their professors: Where were you?The UC Riverside public policy students were among the likely hundreds of thousands in California who lost access to the all-important academic software Canvas when it was brought down by a hacker group Thursday afternoon. Losing Canvas meant losing assignments, tests, and required reading material along with a way to communicate with instructors. The timing was especially bad for UC students, who were hunkering down for midterms or finals.
“This is a very crucial time for students to be able to access their coursework. So I definitely do think that professors should reach out,” Mejia said in an interview. “And they did not.”
Merchant heard from only one professor by Friday who addressed the downed website. She learned about the hack attack on the social media site Reddit after she was logged out of her account while finishing an assignment…