With the worldwide outbreak of new computer viruses, the Information Services team spent Welcome Weekend trying to protect the university’s server from infection. They issued warnings and personal assistance, provided a free virus protection program and gave new and returning students specific instructions on how to prevent their computers from receiving viruses or spreading them themselves. “Seven thousand PCs all hook up on a weekend and they haven’t been on campus since June,” said Vice President of Information Services Bob Weir. “The way these [viruses] behave, when you hook them to a network can cause network problems.” The word from other schools that began earlier was that nearly 50 percent of the personal computers had been infected. As of Monday, about 50 percent of the computers that the IS team touched were infected, according to Director of IS Customer Services Pamela Erskine, but between 20 to 30 percent of ResNet users had not yet registered. “We actually came through it cleaner than most,” Weir said. However, he also said that “we’re not out of the woods yet.” Despite the work that IS is doing, Weir said “the only way to really fix it is to have each individual fix his own work station.” He said that faculty and students should not open attachments from people they don’t know and keep their virus protection programs updated. Despite the extra work, freshman psychology major Ryan Fields was happy that ResNet helped him out. “I actually had a virus on my computer that I didn’t know I had,” Fields said. Freshman Rob Delvecchio, an undecided major, said that he did not have to do any work himself because “a guy from ResNet came in and updated all my virus software.” Chris Aubin, a freshman architecture major, installed his own virus protection software. “We got the patches from the computer people so we installed the patches,” Aubin said. He said that they “took a while to install,” but “you had to do it so it wasn’t bad.” Information Services will be open until 10 p.m. for the next two weeks to help students deal with problems.