If you think your teacher has forgotten all about the e-mail you sent yesterday, try not to panic, for your professor might not have received it at all.

“The e-mail server Zimmer crashed from what appears to be corrupted data,” Eric McLain, associate director of Information Technology Services, said. “As a result, about half of all users weren’t able to access their e-mail.”

These users consisted mainly of faculty and staff, as students and cvip.net users access their e-mail from a different server.

Wednesday evening, Information Technology Services sent out an e-mail to the faculty and staff informing them that their e-mail would be down until Thursday at 6 p.m.

“I almost had a heart attack,” test coordinator Linda Ensche said. “My e-mail is like my life line.”

Ensche receives tests by e-mail from all over the world, and when the server crashed, it made her realize how dependent she is on her e-mail to perform her job.

“If it was down for a week, my staff and I would be in serious trouble,” she said.

Information Technology Services ran system checks on Zimmer and repaired the damaged data, McLain said, and brought the system back online by Thursday afternoon. All cued e-mail was then delivered.

“We don’t believe that any messages were lost,” he said.

Ensche eventually received all 1,700 of her missing e-mails.

“It’s just an eye-opener,” she said, “but maybe it was a good thing, like a wake-up call.”

She vows to invest in a back-up e-mail in case this should ever happen again.

“It just goes to show that we’re slaves to our e-mails and computers,” she said.