DN THURSDAY, OCT. 31, 2013
THE T HE D DAILY AILY N NEWS EWS
BALLSTATEDAILY.COM
University to tweet out safety notices
DN PHOTO ILLUSTRATION MARCEY BURTON
An anonymous students prepares to snort crushed Vicodin. The Silk Road site ran off the secure currency known as Bitcoins.
SILK ROAD
CLOSED
Account will launch by year’s end in response to student demand
Students talk buying drugs online, risk of buying from local dealers
DEVAN FILCHAK 72 HOURS REPORTER | features@bsudailynews.com
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EMMA KATE FITTES NEWS EDITOR news@bsudailynews.com
EDITOR’S NOTE: David Smith and Jason Johnson are pseudonyms for students who wish to remain anonymous.
A new Twitter account will launch by the end of the semester for emergency notifications, said a university spokesperson. Tony Proudfoot said Ball State Marketing and Communications began considering it at the end of the last academic year, when student demand increased. Setting “Setting up a Twitter account is not difficult, it’s just pro- up a Twitter cedures and staffing to make account is sure that once we get it set up, we use it consistently like not difficult, we use all of our other meth- it’s just ods,” Proudfoot said. “We have found that that is an effective procedures way to get the word out quick- and staffing ly and it’s something that stuto make sure dents look for.” Emergency notifications that once are for situations when the campus community needs to we get it set take action to protect them- up, we use it selves. Proudfoot said they use consistently multiple outlets to get the like we use all message to students, including email, text message, the of our other website, digital signage and methods. traditional media. “I would consider the text TONY [message] probably the most PROUDFOOT, immediate communication university that we have,” Proudfoot spokesperson said. “So what we do is we sequence.” He said Twitter would be low on his list of priorities, but that all of these mediums are usually used within five minutes. Since the university website is the official source of information in the event of an emergency, it is their first priority and any information that’s going to be posted is going to be at bsu.edu. “As soon as we send out a tweet that has that short code that’s going to direct people back to the website, we want to make sure that information is there when they connect back to it,” Proudfoot said. Proudfoot said concern about emergency alerts was rare before the shooting at Ivy Tech in April 2007, and that Twitter wasn’t even an idea then. He said each incident has individual factors that determine how quickly an alert comes out or from where.
H
e considered ordering it for a while. Once he did, he waited anxiously for the flat pack envelope to arrive. David Smith, a Ball State student, had just ordered drugs online for the first time. The 2C-B, a rare hallucinogen typically found in Europe, he ordered was from Poland. The package had to go through international customs with his real name and address on it.
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“Once the package is in the mail, the paranoia kind of sits in,” he said. “There is no stopping it at that point. You have drugs coming to your house in the mail. You can’t do anything about it at that point. But I’ve had nothing but positive experiences, and they all came through.” On Oct. 2, the FBI arrested Ross William Ulbricht, a man who referred to himself as Dread Pirate Roberts online. Ulbricht ran the website that connected drug dealers and drug users from all over the world to make sales and purchases anonymously, using Bitcoin currency and encryption. The official U.S. Attorney complaint said approximately 957,079 registered user accounts reflected on the Silk Road server. Smith said the reason he began using Silk Road was partially for safety. “Basically, it was just as a way to find high quality, pure substances that are actually the substance that they claim to be and not what some stupid college kid is trying to pass off as acid,” he said. Silk Road could be used to buy any drugs from marijuana to heroin. People also could buy weapons from the website.
»
ROAD CLOSED
More than 10 Silk Road users have been arrested internationally. According to Reuters, the FBI said
DN PHOTO ILLUSTRATION DENA DOBRZYKOWSKI
An anonymous student breaks down Vicodin before snorting the opiate. The Silk Road had approximately 957,079 registered users prior to its eventual shutdown.
there will be more arrests. Smith said he didn’t worry about the arrests because the federal agents are looking for people who bought large quantities of drugs to distribute. He only bought drugs for personal use in quantities of a gram or less. Users of Silk Road used a Tor client that scrambles IP addresses to access the website. Drugs and other illegal items were purchased online through Bitcoin currency, which are encrypted money deposits. “Once you figure out bitcoins, which is a 15-minute Google search pretty much, you transfer them to what is called your wallet on Silk Road or any other website like that,” he said. Smith said the website is then as easily accessible as commonly known shopping websites. “Once they are on Silk Road, it is Amazon,” Smith said. “You treat it just like you have store credit on Amazon or eBay and fill up your shopping cart.” All drugs and sellers include rating and review information, which speak to the quality of the drug, the stealth of the package and the overall quality of the transaction. Jason Johnson, another Ball State student, said he even had a buyer back out of a transaction once.
DRUGS ONLINE Prior to being shut down, the Silk Road website sold drugs, ranging from marijuana to heroin, and weapons. Users made purchases through Bitcoin currency. • The website had 957,079 registered users • The U.S. government shut it down on Oct. 2 • The FBI has arrested 10 people internationally SOURCES: Reuters, U.S. Attorney complaint
See DRUGS, page 6
See TWITTER, page 7
NEW COURSE REGISTRATION WILL NOT INCLUDE LOCATION Classroom locations will not be included in registration information for Spring 2014. When students go to register for classes through the Self-Service Banner, class locations will read “TBA.” Steve Reed, coordinator of enterprise systems, said the university is looking at how to better utilize classroom space and is waiting to determine where classes will be until after registration. “It’s nothing really to be alarmed about,” he said. Campus is divided into partitions, where classes for similar majors take place, like media classes in the partition from the David Letterman Communication and Media Building to the Art and Journalism Building. Reed said the primary partitions will not change, and they will try to avoid classes breaking out of their partitions. “[We’re looking for] efficiencies gathered in the partitions,” he said. The university will post room assignments on schedules during December by Finals Week. – STAFF REPORTS
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