Collegiate Times

Upon checking their e-mail Monday morning, 4,000 members of the graduate student community found what appeared to be their weekly Listserv message from the Graduate School director of Student Services Monika Gibson.

The message turned out to be a spoof and included fake news bulletins from around the campus.

The message, which is normally released each Monday morning, was sent Sunday evening and included news bulletins such as "Underground Halloween Adventure," stating students would be offered special tours of the steam tunnels beneath campus, and a campus-wide "bag ban" that would ban students from carrying any bag, from computer bags to purses, on any part of campus.

"As far as the format goes, it looked exactly like the normal e-mails do," said Ed Ware, graduate chemical engineering student. "It had me going for a minute."

Ware said that he questioned the legitimacy of the e-mail when he noticed the prize for the winner of an upcoming "Pie Eating Contest" was a hand-carved Penrose triangle, an impossible shape.

Though it was an intended practical joke, the fraudulent message forced Gibson to spend much of her Monday morning fielding calls and e-mails from concerned students.

"When a spam e-mail like this is sent out, even if it's funny, it still reduces the trust of students in the system" said Gibson. "How are they to know whether the next post is real or not?"

On Monday, Gibson released an e-mail explaining the odd message, in which she stated it was released by a "misguided individual who used my PID." She also informed both university officials and Virginia Tech Police of the fraudulent e-mail. So far there is no word as to who is responsible for the message.