An OBSTACLE ELEMENTAL

Ball State’s Robert Bell building flooded over semester break.

Reporter

Three to four inches of water. Baseboards ruined. Ceiling tiles broken. Burst pipes.

It was a heating system failure that caused Robert Bell to flood over winter break. The building uses a radiation-type heating system to keep it warm in the winter. This takes water heated through the pipes to then be radiated out into the room.

“There were three spots where the water in the pipes froze and expanded,” James Lowe, the associate vice president for facilities planning and management at Ball State, said. “It burst the pipe, and when it heats up, we have the water leak. It freezes, bursts, the pipe comes warm again, boom, water starts flooding.”

Lowe thinks because it was in three spots, one location might have caused the other two locations that were frozen to heat up and burst.

The flooding took place on the second floor where a majority of the English department offices are. Subsequently, the water flooded the second floor and ruined a good amount of ceiling tiles and baseboards on the first floor.

One of the staff members affected was Sean Lovelace, chair of the department of English and professor of English. His administrative office (RB 297) was damaged in the flood.

While eating on Christmas Day, Lovelace got a call from his dean, Maureen McCarthy. She said Robert Bell was actively flooding. Lovelace received videos of the water inches high on the second floor.

“It really impacted the professors whose offices were on the second floor because you can imagine you come off the holidays, and you’re preparing for the semester,” Lovelace said. “It just adds another stressor, like you can’t get in your office. There are so many blowers and fans, they pretty much had to do their prep away from their offices.”

Even if some offices were flooded and caused a delay to prepare for spring semester planning, Lovelace couldn’t say enough how thankful he was for the people who helped solve the problems.

“I saw the people working over the Christmas holidays when I came here several times,” Lovelace said. “With the facilities and custodial people, we’re really grateful for their work.”

Deborah Mix, professor of English and assistant chair of programs, was also affected by the flood.

“We didn’t have any personal items really in the assistant chair’s office, and so we didn’t [lose anything],” Mix said. “The office is torn up, but we

Mix said the walls were damaged from the bottom by about six to eight inches and accredited the staff and facilities for making things go as smoothly as possible.

Jill Christman, who is a professor in creative writing and director of the creative writing program, did lose some personal belongings.

Christman is also the senior editor of two literary magazines, “River Teeth” and “Beautiful Things.”

“I had a stack of banker’s boxes on one side because I didn’t have enough room in my filing cabinets,” Christman said. “The bottom one collapsed, and because the water got to about a foot and a half high in there, once it collapsed, the rest of the boxes collapsed. I lost a lot of things. I lost a lot of books, but the thing that kind of broke my heart was that I had a box of files that were my files for when I first started teaching creative nonfiction, my very first classes here at Ball State back in 2002.”

Christman has three offices in Robert Bell. One is her personal faculty office in RB270, an office for the director of creative writing in RB282 and lastly RB283, an immersive-learning office where most of the work goes on for the literary magazines.

Christman said she has been continuing to teach her classes with as much energy, enthusiasm and humor as she can. Nevertheless, it has been a challenge.

Ball State officials hired Hays and Sons, an outside contractor, to deal with the situation.

“They have more fans and humidifiers than we have,” Lowe said. “They provide us with service when it goes beyond our normal complement

It just adds another stressor, like you can’t get in your office. There are so many blowers and fans, they pretty much had to do their prep away from their offices.”

- SEAN LOVELACE, Chair of the department of English and professor of English

Of Fans And Dehumidi Ers Before We Started The

The first priority for Lowe and the department was to ensure classrooms were ready to go and usable when school started Jan. 9. The second goal was to work hard to ensure faculty offices were being put back together, so they were usable again. Lowe said via email it is too early to tell how much the damage will cost.

This is not the first flood in Robert Bell. In early November 2018, there was another, that time on the fourth floor, but it also coincided with ceiling tiles on the third floor being damaged and falling through, similar to the most recent flood.

The incident in 2018 was due to a contractor who was testing exterior fire hydrants along McKinley Avenue. It caused pressure in the pipes leading into the building, and the ruptured section was within Robert Bell.

“For us, a 1984-86 building isn’t all that old,” Lowe said, referring to Robert Bell. “When we renovate, which we will someday down the road, it could be years and years from now, we will certainly look at a more robust heating system for that building, but I don’t believe it was because of the age of the system. It was just incredibly cold.”

Contact Elijah Poe with comments at elijah. poe@bsu.edu or on Twitter @ElijahPoe4.

Abigail Denault Reporter

Since its creation, the internet has seemingly been a land of possibility, but possibility is not always benevolent.

According to the 2021 report of the FBI’s Internet Crime Complaint Center (IC3), Indiana alone had 11,399 victims of cyber crime and a total of over $60 million in losses.

However, people are not completely defenseless on the internet with a rising hero on the scene ready to save the day—cybersecurity.

“Without cybersecurity, the internet would just be the Wild West,” Sam Looney, second-year applied cybersecurity major, said. “It is essential to a functioning internet, which is essential to a functioning world nowadays.”

Looney is one of more than 20 students in Ball State University’s new major, applied cybersecurity, that rolled out last fall. The idea for the major, however, started much earlier.

David Hua, associate director of undergraduate programs and interim director of the Center for Information and Communication Sciences at Ball State, and Lt. Colonel Kelly Rosenberger, former chair of Ball State’s military science department, began talking about creating a cybersecurity major over six years ago. Originally, the idea was for cadets to be trained for the U.S. Army’s new cyber command division, Hua said.

From the attacker’s perspective, it is finding a path that may not be defended well. From the defense, it is finding every possible route and increasing defenses before the attacker finds them first.

The game is high stakes, which is why Hua implemented a competition each semester for students to test their skills in a simulated situation. Those in the major are required to participate.

“It has you try and crack passwords and crack ciphers,” Looney said. “It is super interesting. I’ve only been to one training session, but I’m super excited.”

Another applied cybersecurity first-year student, Ke’Juan Smith, who is a part of the group that Hua helps practice for the competition, shared Looney’s excitement.

“I am actually excited about it,” Smith said. “[Hua] wants to do some courses and help us practice, and I really appreciate that. I just gotta find time in my schedule to actually go, but I plan on it.”

The competition is not just for applied cybersecurity majors, especially as some have already been participating. Brooke Bonek, thirdyear computer technology major with minors in business administration and technical theatre, is especially involved with these competitions as the vice president of the Computer Technology Student Organization.

“You’re basically put into a scenario that you would actually do in real life,” Bonek said. “You’re assigned a task by the group that runs the competition, and you have to analyze this network traffic page or look at this website and figure out how you can exploit it if you’re doing more of an offensive security type thing. It shows you what you expect to do when you actually go out into the real world and do your job.”

The competition by the National Cyber League (NCLA) creates “a safe environment for students to practice their cybersecurity skills,” according to their website.

According to a 2018 study by Information Systems Audit and Control Association, an organization focused on the industry, they found those who do not identify as white or Caucasian make up only 26 percent of the cybersecurity workforce. Women in the field make up little more than half of that number at 14 percent of the workforce.

“It’s been a lot of just myself, or like there’s been one or two other girls on the very first day, and then they end up dropping out,” Bonek said. “I’ve learned how to stick through it and make sure I can show these guys that not just guys can do it. I definitely feel like I’ve been able to show what I can do.”

Smith also shared his own frustrations and hopes for the future of diversity for the field.

“I’ve seen a wide array of people that are not the usual archetype in this field,” Smith said. “I feel like it should be like that. Every field should be able to have that flexibility and not be constrained to only, ‘You can have that job, or you can have this job.’ You should have whatever job you want to be in with the field you choose.”

Smith also had a piece of advice for any student interested in the field.

“Especially early on, if you’re struggling, really try to persevere. Stick it out because it’s a payoff thing,” Smith said. “If you like math, it’s kind of like that. It requires a lot of critical thinking, and when you finally figure out the solution to a problem, it’s very satisfying. If you like that kind of thing, you should really stick with this major.”

Students interested in the on-campus or online cybersecurity major can find more information on Ball State’s website. Students of all majors interested in participating in the NCLA competition can contact Hua for more information. Contact Abigail Denault with comments via email at abigail.denault@bsu.edu.

United States Cyber Crime Losses

“Last summer, we finally got approval from the state to offer the new applied cybersecurity degree, both as an on-campus major as well as an online only major,” Hua said. “By the beginning of fall semester, without any advertising, we already had [a] little over 20 enrolled [people] in the program.” Cybersecurity, along with its other STEM counterparts, often gets put into a box, but Hua is seeking to do just the opposite with students.

“A big part of what we’re going to be trying to do with the students is to get them to think outside the box all the time,” Hua said. “Maybe not even pay attention to the most obvious path. Not to ignore it, but when you’re looking at it from an attacker’s perspective, you’re trying to find all these other ways things can be done.”

What exactly does that mean?

As Hua explained, if someone is looking to get to a restaurant in town for dinner, how many paths are there from campus? The job of the major is finding all possible routes to the destination.

There is still an understanding of the importance of the craft, and the demand for cybersecurity is high. With that, there are benefits.

“There’s the stereotypical image of this lone person sitting alone in a dark space with a hoodie on typing code outs, and while there’s still some of that, that’s not the majority of what’s happening anymore. It’s organized crime,” Hua said. “It’s being organized by nation states. We’ve got cyber warfare occurring between countries. There is a huge demand globally, and job potential is just enormous. If you have any kind of cyber skills, especially if you’re willing to relocate, you can go just about anywhere.”

The stereotypes of this rising industry have led to a glass ceiling, as women and people of color are often not as represented. Hua explained his hope for the future of the program as he looks at his first class of cybersecurity majors, who are beyond the imagery of white young men in hoodies behind a computer.