ND students scammed by phishing emails

By CAROLINE COLLINS and MATTHEW BRODER news Writers

Last week, students received an email from the o ffice of i nformation Technology ( oi T), with the subject line “ nd s tudents Lost $1000s to this s cam.”

The email described how, “students have lost thousands of dollars to scammers impersonating faculty members with enticing job offers.” a ccording to Lenette votava, head of internal marketing and communications for oi T, the scams were primarily fraudulent student job openings.

“The majority of scams reported to the i nformation s ecurity team are student job scams offering fraudulent research assistant positions,” she said over email. “These scams are ultimately designed to steal students’ personal information.”

Phishing scams come in a variety of different forms, such as fraudulent job offers and fake invoices. They can also come through a variety of different media like email, text messages, phone calls and social media.

What they all share in common is that they “try to deceive the recipient into taking an action, such as revealing personal information,” votava said.

These messages typically include a phone number or email address that recipients are directed to for the full job description, rather than directing them to an official application through the University. s ome other indicators of phishing messages are that they may ask for personal information or passwords, are sent from an unusual address instead of an @nd.edu address and create a sense of urgency. votava said that if students respond to a phishing message, they will likely be asked to purchase supplies for the job or perform money transfers.

“The sender will either promise to reimburse or more commonly, request personal bank account information in order to deposit a mobile check into the victim’s account,” votava said. “These checks are fraudulent and will eventually be revoked by the bank, leaving a deficit in the victim’s account if that money was used to purchase items or transfer money for the job.” s ophomore s ophia Fowler said her c anvas account was hacked in n ovember. h er personal phone number was part of a larger data leak and she received messages requesting money. s he said the scammers threatened to lock her out of her account and report her for cheating if she did not send the money.

Fowler said she filed a report with nd P d and reported the incident to oi T. oi T froze her account associated with her school email for 24 hours. a fter freezing her account, they recommended she change her passwords and set up o kta authentication for c anvas through push notifications rather than text messages.

“Push notifications directly from a service’s proprietary app are generally more secure than text messages, especially for verification purposes,” Jeremy m oynihan, the d irector of c ampus Technology and i nnovation in s tudent Government, said. “You can be even more confident that the message came directly from o kta.” votava explained that students can protect themselves from scams by understanding the warning signs of unsafe messages. s tudents should also familiarize themselves with approved channels for student employment on campus by referring to the J ob board. s he said that faculty members and staff have been instructed not to communicate about student employment through email. votava said the i nformation s ecurity team is working to filter out spam and phishing emails to prevent them from reaching students’ inboxes, but that it is important for students to be on the lookout for these messages.

“Job scams will continue to pose a threat to the higher education community,” votava said. “ c yber criminals evolve their strategies, making these phishing scams increasingly difficult to detect.”

Contact Caroline Collins at ccolli23@nd.edu and Matthew Broder at mbroder@nd.edu

campus in 1874 as director of the Art d epartment. d uring his tenure, Gregori also painted decorative works in the c hurch of the s acred h eart, now the b asilica, like the c oronation of the v irgin and other works in the m ain b uilding like the allegorical painting on the interior of the dome that depicts “a female personification of r eligion surrounded by Philosophy, h istory, s cience, Fame, m usic, and Poetry,” according to an exhibition catalog written by s ophia m eyers, who graduated from the University with an m .A. in Art h istory in 2010. c olumbus’ founding of the n ew World is now thought of as an event that “destroyed the already established civilizations of [Indigenous people in] two continents,’” m eyers writes. The catalog also acknowledges, however, that during the late 19th century when the murals were painted, novels like Washington Irving’s “The Life and voyages of c hristopher c olumbus”

(1828) portrayed c olumbus as a heroic figure who “symbolized divine destiny and maverick Independence,” m eyers said in the catalog. s ince c olumbus was a c atholic from s pain, the n otre d ame community in the late 1800s viewed him as an important c atholic figure in Protestant-dominated U. s . history. Kathleen s prows c ummings, professor of American s tudies, who took two of her classes to visit the murals this week expands on this idea. s prows c ummings, who teaches the courses “ n otre d ame in America” and “c atholics in America,” says that in the 1880s many Americans believed c atholics couldn’t be good s prows c ummings said that while the murals are inaccurate and culturally insensitive, they provide an opportunity to understand the past and move the conversation forward.

Americans because they were recent immigrants, and they supported the Pope.

“[ c olumbus] was presented as a figure who was a devout c atholic and who helped civilize the continent … It tells us an awful lot about what Father s orin and c atholics in general wanted to say about themselves in the 1880s,” s prows c ummings said.

“They portray a narrative that seems benign … this encounter between c olumbus and Indigenous peoples as a c atholic story of conversion,” she said. “It … gives no hints of the genocide and cultural appropriation. I definitely think they should be covered, but I think there should be opportunities to talk about what it means and how we can understand … the limitations of our past.” b ird says that the murals should not just be covered up, but taken down completely.

Ashlee b ird, m oreau post doctoral fellow in the department of American s tudies is a n ative American game designer who studies the representation of Indigenous people. s he is Western Abenaki and originally hails from the c hamplain valley of vermont.

“With c olumbus as a figure, there’s this holding on to this narrative of discovery and glory that are … almost entirely fictional at this point. We know c olumbus never set foot here, [in n orth America]. We also know that he kidnapped and sold young Indigenous girls into sex slavery,” she said. There’s accounts of him having his soldiers feed babies to their dogs. h e openly stated that the Indigenous people would make good slaves because they were friendly and accommodating.” b ird said that uncovering the murals has the detrimental effect of perpetuating negative and stereotypical images of Indigenous people. b ird related the c olumbus murals to her work with Indigenous representation in contemporary video games. “ s ome games actually implicitly teach players to behave violently towards n ative American people in digital spaces, regardless of if the game is telling them that they’re the bad guy or not. I don’t think something like the murals is that dissimilar honestly. We shouldn’t keep perpetuating these images of Indigenous people as subjugated or you worshiping a man who committed heinous acts against them,” b ird said. b en h eller, associate professor of s panish, has taught classes where students have read c olumbus’ diary along with other works from the period. As part of these classes, he would take students to see the murals in person.

“These histories of representation that have been violent and historically inaccurate either trap Indigenous peoples in places of history and violence or tokenize them. For teaching purposes, there are plenty of images of those murals that professors could show their students, there really isn’t any point other than to glorify them by seeing them in person,” b ird said.

“I think … it’s different from seeing something on a screen or on a page,” he said. “You’re in a large hallway with high ceilings, and you see the size of these murals, and that’s part of the …impact of these negative images. s eeing them in that context … and knowing that the admissions office for many years was right across the hall from the c olumbus murals, you get a sense of the way in which the murals were embedded in the identity of the University and how that identity was conveyed to prospective students.” h eller talked about the need to contextualize and understand c olumbus’ project by reading his writings and the writings of critics like b artolome de las c asas, a priest who documented many massacres against Indigenous peoples of Latin America.

“The journal that he completed, based on his first voyage to the n ew World, is absolutely fascinating, because there he records his first interactions with … Indigenous people of Latin America, in the b ahamas and in the c aribbean more generally. h e very casually says that he took a number of c aribbean peoples back to s pain so that they can learn s panish. What we’re seeing there is kidnapping and forcible movement of peoples and the beginnings of the mistreatment of Indigenous peoples that quickly developed into a system of slavery in the early 1500s,” h eller said.

In past classes before the murals were covered, h eller would discuss with his students what should be done with these relics. s ome students talked about removing the murals and transferring them to a museum space, a move that would be technologically challenging considering the murals have been painted directly on the wall. o thers thought about installing plaques next to the murals to help contextualize the history. Those students suggested descriptions should be written in e nglish, s panish and some n ative American languages. s ome students also thought about commissioning new artwork for other parts of the m ain b uilding, which would tell the other side of the story from n ative American perspective, preferably, from n ative American artists. b ird said that the reigning narratives about c olumbus as a c atholic explorer stand in the way of the work that needs to be done between the c atholic c hurch and Indigenous peoples, particularly at n otre d ame, an institution that is on the land of Indigenous peoples. s prows c ummings also talked about how the University can acknowledge the legacy of Indigenous people, specifically the Pokagon b and of the Potawatomi, and have a wider understanding of c atholic role models. s he talked about Georgetown University’s memory project that recorded how in 1838, the m aryland Jesuits and Georgetown University sold more than 272 enslaved people from four Jesuit-owned tobacco plantations in southern m aryland to plantation-owners in southern Louisiana.

The Potawatomi originally lived on the land on which the University is built and had been practicing c atholicism since around 1830, 12 years before Fr. s orin arrived from France in 1842.

“This land on which we teach and learn has been occupied by native peoples for hundreds of years, and we don’t do such a great job acknowledging that,” s prows c ummings said.

“I think n otre d ame should take a real lead among c atholic universities in grappling with this issue … akin to what Georgetown did starting in 2016,” s prows c ummings said.

Contact Angela Mathew at amathew3@nd.edu segments to the club. The first is projects, which is huge and also pretty unique for our consulting club because what we do is we work with local businesses in the s outh b end community to solve business problems they might have,” Paulmann said. “We’ve worked with The Pigeon and the h en Pottery studio, c rossFit s outh b end, just a lot of local businesses to solve competitive problems.”

Paulmann also said that club projects can touch on a wide variety of issues, including “profit maximization, marketing, or financial modeling — we’ve done a whole lot of things for them.”

While these real-world projects are a highlight of the Irish c onsulting c lub, Paulmann said that the second component, education, can also be extremely helpful for students looking into careers in consulting.

“It’s about preparing students for recruiting and learning more about consulting in general,” Paulmann said. “ s o in the fall, it looks like a pretty high-level overview, where students learn about working in consulting and what a consulting project looks like. And in the spring, it’s more about the specifics of recruiting and casing itself.

While I cc is structured between projects and education, Paulmann along with vice president and senior, Kevan o ’ b rien, agree that there is a third element to the club: community.

“The third thing that we really tried to do is foster a sense of community within the club and build kind of a social element to the club where everyone gets to know each other and kind of work together on the recruiting process,” o ’ b rien said.

This intra-club community building takes the form of different mentoring programs, resume reviews, practice interviews or, according to o ’ b rien, “bouncing ideas off each other and just learning from each other’s experience.” b oth Paulmann and o ’ b rien concluded by reflecting on why they decided to join the I cc and what has been the most rewarding aspect of their experience.

As for this semester’s upcoming projects, Paulmann and o ’ b rien assured The o bserver that although they are still in the works of finalizing the list, members can expect about three projects that cover a wide range of industries.

“There’s a lot of like projects that people do in classes or other clubs, where you’re all working together in a team to do something, but it’s not necessarily like a real-world application,” o ’ b rien said. “ b ut here, we’re actually working with people in the s outh b end community and providing recommendations that they are actually implementing in their businesses. s o, you get to see a real-world impact of our work, which I think is really cool.”

Paulmann echoes this appreciation and then adds a comment about her overall feeling of gratitude for the community and friendships she’s made through the club.

“I was drawn to consulting because I didn’t know exactly what I wanted to do, longer-term. And consulting lets you explore a lot of different opportunities in a variety of different industries, all performing a bunch of different functions,” Paulmann said. “ b ut I stayed very passionate about this and I’ve been involved with it because I care a lot about the social aspect. I’ve met so many great people throughout this process and I’m so thankful. I just want to be able to provide that same opportunity, that channel, for underclassmen.”

Contact Kelsey Quint at kquint@nd.edu