BREAKING—According to a new email from CUIT, Columbia Housing’s internal electronic database experienced a complete blackout late last night. “Our technicians are working around the clock to try to restore this system,” one housing spokesperson reported. “However, we are concerned that there is a high probability of significant data loss as a result of this outage.”
Despite the efforts of Columbia’s IT department, it seems both the main server and the backup server for the housing lottery have been corrupted and completely wiped of data, and the chances of recovering this information are reportedly “slim to none.” As a result, Housing plans to announce in the next few days that the lottery numbers for the 2025-2026 Academic Year will have to be reassigned.
“We realize that this solution is not ideal, but we believe that this might be the only way forward at this point,” said Columbia Housing Associate Director John Pezzolla. “It’s obviously unfortunate that some students who have already selected their rooms or received really favorable numbers will have to go through this process again, but there’s certainly nothing stopping them from getting lucky twice!”
The Colombia Daily Spectador will continue to report updates as Columbia Housing assesses the damage. At print time, unconfirmed reports are circulating that the data on housing group registration may have also been wiped from the server, so students may have to repeat the most taxing part of the housing process: group formation.
