I would like to express my experiences to Concordia University in regards to their new “myconcordia.ca” student portal page. At first, I thought highly of it, being a user-friendly, informative and very useful tool to the students. However, on the afternoon of December 16th, I had a different experience with this so-called myconcordia.ca. After trying to log in for a couple of times with no success, and then entering my user name and password I finally got to my portal page. I clicked on my registration information and my grades popped up. I saw a “B” on my English course, and nothing for the political science and sociology course. I found this very perculiar seems how I am not a political science, English or a sociology student; I’m an Engineering student, so what does that have to do with me? I scrolled down and there was “Paul’s” sympatico email, but my name is Hussein! What is going on!? Does that mean that the next time I log on into my personal account I will read Frank’s grades or Kelly’s information on student loans. Indeed, I logged on again later in the evening and I was able to view the grades of an MBA student including his full address.
So how beneficial is IITS after all? They charge us a lot of money for things that can be done with from an outside source for a fraction of the price. For example, three months ago I had to pay $400 dollars to have an Internet connection in one of the offices on Mackay. I wanted to do it myself, or have an outside contractor to do it, but according to the rules, it’s illegal.
Question remains, do I want my personal information be available on Concordia’s servers where other people could possibly view them when they logon to view their personal information. So if IITS cannot properly run a student page, that ran perfectly fine before, where do all our student fees go? Maybe we should pass by every Friday and see if they hold staff pizza parties or something, cause I can’t see where else they spend our money.
Signed,
Hussein Madi
NOT a political science student!
