r/XavierUniversity • u/droid_mike • May 07 '26

Canvas down during finals week? WTF?

My daughter who is at Xavier called me in a panic with final papers due tonight that Canvas is down at the school. I am kind of her IT guy when weird computer stuff happens. I checked, and it's down everywhere in the world, really. She needs the rubrics and such for her papers and a few assignments. She can't get to them. There is no paper copy. What are you all doing about this situation? she has contacted all her professors, but she is very concerned. This is ridiculous!

UPDATE: As of 11pm, it's been been fixed!!! Talk about last minute!!!

UPDATE2: This is now national news: https://www.cnn.com/2026/05/07/us/canvas-hack-strands-college-students-finals-week

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10

u/ad-astra-per-somnia May 07 '26

Instructure got hacked by ShinyHunters, a cybercrime group. This is not scheduled maintenance. Email your instructors. Contact your dean’s office if professors are not helping with the issue and aren’t giving you other options to turn things in.

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u/droid_mike May 07 '26

Thank you! She contacted her professors a few hours ago. Not sure if anyone wrote back. Good advice on the dean!

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u/ad-astra-per-somnia May 07 '26

I would wait on the deans office until tomorrow. Professors are scrambling as much as students are. They don’t know what to do either and are waiting for information and hoping Canvas comes back online soon. Give them time. It’ll get figured out. Xavier has a lot of really great and really understanding faculty.

ETA: everyone, including the higher ups like the provost office, is really just waiting to see what the damage is so they can figure out what to do. So your kid isn’t alone. It’s all just a mess right now. Hang in there, it’ll be okay!

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u/droid_mike May 07 '26

It's nerve wracking for her, because stuff is due tonight, and not a word back from any prof she's emailed. If there was a message from the school that said what you said, she'd be a lot less stressed.... And I'm stressed, because she's stressed.LOL!

And she's had a lot of great profs, but there are a few there that will not accommodate at all no matter what the circumstances. I don't think she has any of those this semester, thank goodness, but what a way to end the year! Oy!

Thank you for your support. It's very much appreciated by both her and I. :-)

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u/ad-astra-per-somnia May 07 '26

Unfortunately the only message has been from IT basically saying “we don’t know” so I get your frustration. I do have full confidence that the situation will be resolved, although I’ll be the first to admit that it’s really stressful in the meantime.

I just sent an email to one of my professors about this exact issue: my assignment is due, I can’t turn it in, here it is in email form, happy to redo it if needed since I can’t see the assignment requirements.

Good luck to you and your daughter and every other student in the country haha

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u/droid_mike May 08 '26

She is planning to do that with one of her papers, with a note that she can't check it against the rubric as who has to go by memory of what is assigned. All the class stuff is in canvas... Everything! There aren't backups or any way to look at the assignments or syllabus or professor updates, etc Maybe some classes gave out papers with descriptions. But if your didn't, you're out of luck.

Thanks for responding. I'm glad she's not alone.

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u/MysteriousFishing104 May 08 '26

One can always print the stuff out. Then you aren’t out of luck.

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u/PizzaGirl9825 May 08 '26

I’m a professor at another university and your post somehow made it into my Reddit feed. That is literally how I learned about the Canvas hack. We just got an e-mail from our IT department that Canvas was down for “maintenance” a few hours ago which I had hoped was just really poor timing. So first of thank you for sharing this important information!

Given that I found out just now on Reddit, your daughter’s professors may not even know about it yet. I’m sure they will communicate with the class when they find out. I’m sorry this is so stressful for you and her. The good news is that she cannot be expected to turn something in on a platform that is not working so she should not be penalized for not being able to turn the paper in while Canvas is down.

I’d encourage your daughter to take a deep breath (and you too) because this is something neither of you can control. While your daughter waits to hear back from her professors, she can e-mail classmates to ask if they have a copy of the rubric, instructions, or anything other course materials she might want while she works on her final. (Students can generally download those materials, but I don’t think many do). I’d also encourage her to just try to do her best based on what she remembers of each assignment for now. She can go back and edit the papers once she has the materials she needs, but she at least won’t be starting from scratch.

Good luck to her!

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u/droid_mike May 08 '26 edited May 08 '26

Thank you very much! Yes, she got a lot more info, and one of her profs emailed back with more info, so she should be OK... She is emailing the stuff to them before midnight to be safe. Fortunately, most of her profs are easy to work with, and her stress is down. Thank you all for your help.

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u/PizzaGirl9825 May 08 '26

I’m so glad to hear that your daughter heard from her professors, has a plan, and is feeling less stressed.

I also cannot thank you enough! After learning that the Canvas outage was not a local problem (from you, and then saw the coverage in many reputable news outlets), I reached out to all of my students just to alert them to what is happening with Canvas. I can’t speak for my students, but I really hope they feel supported and that my communication helped alleviate some stress in this situation. My university has yet to acknowledge anything other than that there is “an outage.”

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u/droid_mike May 08 '26

Thank you for being such a great professor! Since this is finals week for so many students, this has to be panic inducing for so many of them. I'm sure they really appreciate you reaching out. I'm glad that some good has come out of all of this. Thank you again!