Article content continued

“The Fulcrum is really hurting now. We see the Fulcrum as a running history of student life, how students interact with the administration. We’re concerned about what it will mean to have all those memories erased. It’s a huge blow,” he said.

“This is incredibly discouraging,” said Anchal Sharma, the Fulcrum’s previous editor-in-chief. No other student newspapers have reported a similar incident, and the university’s French-language newspaper, La Rotonde, was not affected.

“It’s completely unprecedented,” she said.

Meanwhile, the Fulcrum’s web host said most of the lost material may be back within a week. Both Gergyek and Sharma say there are no obvious suspects in the hacking.

However, the Fulcrum has chronicled the chaos that engulfed student government last year after auditors were called in to investigate allegations of misuse of funds.

In August, the board of administrators of the Student Federation of the University of Ottawa (SFUO) voted to call in forensic auditors to look into the funds administered by the student union after the university began withholding transfer payments to the student federation until its concerns are addressed.

In November, an audit concluded that the facts didn’t support the fraud allegations over money paid for catering services linked to relatives of student staff that weren’t actually provided. However, auditors PricewaterhouseCoopers recommended the federation have a conflict of interest and procurement policy and appoint a full-time vice-president of finance with an accounting background. In February, a referendum was held to decide whether the SFUO would be reinstated as the official undergraduate student union. The university later announced that another group, the University of Ottawa Students’ Union, would become the official student union.

“We published some critical opinions and letters,” Sharma.

The Fulcrum has seven full-time staff and abut 10 regular contributors and won the student newspaper of the year award from Canadian University Press last year.