Radio station loses, recovers semester’s worth of files

Home News Radio station loses, recovers semester’s worth of files
Radio station loses, recovers semester’s worth of files
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Last weekend, all radio files from the fall semester of 2020 had been mysteriously deleted, but with the quick action of radio general manager Scot Bertram, they have now been retrieved. 

When sophomore Josh Barker checked his email on Jan. 24,  he found an email from Bertram, informing all radio students that their hard work from the past semester had vanished. 

“Scot looked into it and realized it had disappeared,” Barker said, referring to the shared Box file where radio students store their work. “I was totally shocked.” 

The file contained an entire semester’s worth of radio programs, including podcasts, play-by-plays, and various other audio files. 

“I got a text from one of the students, on Sunday afternoon, who was trying to access one of the folders in the folder and was curious as to whether or not we had taken away his access,” Bertram said. “Pretty quickly we realized that there was a larger problem at hand.” 

As it turned out, a former radio student was cleaning out his personal Box folder when he accidentally deleted the Box file that held every radio program from the semester. 

Though unexpected, the situation was quickly resolved. Bertram was able to contact the college IT Services department, who contacted Box, and all the deleted files were able to be retrieved. Thankfully, the incident was not a pressing concern for either Barker or Bertram, as the deletion didn’t interfere with any on-air broadcasting, and the files involved were old programs and not needed immediately.

 The incident took less than 24 hours to discover, process, and fix, and Bertram praised both ITS and Box for their quick and efficient services. In addition, Bertram said the station would be instituting new rules for its students. 

“The access level that we allowed students, clearly, allowed for deletion, and there was one step below that that did not allow for deletion,” Bertram said. “So, when we re-invited the students to access that folder, we did take them down one level.”

Thanks to Barker, who serves as the radio station’s digital director, the radio station also set up an alternative method for storing students’ work. 

“Twenty minutes later I had sent out an email to everybody with some new procedures of how I wanted them to send things directly,” Barker said.

Senior Martin Petersen, assistant senior producer, said he was confused when he couldn’t access his file on Box. Though initially worried, Petersen praised Bertram for his quick action regarding the retrieval.

 “In four-and-a-half years of being part of the radio station, this was really the first time files were a threat to being lost,” Petersen said. “But Scot does a great job of keeping us organized and figured out quickly how to get the files back.”