Roane State mobilizing after private information stolen from thousands

Roane State mobilizing after private information stolen from thousands

By ANN KEIL
6 News Reporter

HARRIMAN (WATE) -- Roane State Community College officials have set up a call center in hopes of easing fears after private information was stolen from thousands of former and current employees and students.

"I actually first heard about it this morning in our class because our teacher brought it up. He is one of them," said Roane State student Alex Morphew.

Morphew isn't one of the nearly 16,000 people whose identity has been compromised, but he's concerned anyway.

A college accountant, William Fuqua, broke school policy by taking private information off campus. He left it in an unlocked car.

"Highly irresponsible, yes," Morphew said.

6 News asked college officials how this happened.

"In this particular situation, an employee was going to do some extra work at home. He took the file home, and unfortunately, the file did contain sensitive information,' says Danny Gibbs, Roane State's vice president of financial services.

College officials are still investigating. As of Thursday, Fuqua hasn't been reprimanded.

The college is also being criticized for waiting until Wednesday to inform the public. Officials were notified on October 12 about the October 9 incident.

"We wanted to give the investigators time to perhaps recover the data, and we wanted to identify all of the students on the files," Gibbs said.

The phones at the call center have been ringing ever since.

Gibbs says officials are taking the incident seriously, focusing particularly on those at risk.

"We are encouraging students to get a free credit report and to place a free fraud alert on their credit reports," Gibbs said.