Editor: Over the past year, numerous instances of defacement of the musicforjefferson.org web site have been detected and removed. Music education advocate & activist, and current school board member Daniel Wells established the web site in March 2002 upon learning of the Jefferson School District Board of Trustees intent to remove funding for primary music education in the Jefferson Schools.
In addition to relevant news and compiled research on the benefits of early childhood music education posted on the site, an electronic petition was made available for those district parents and residents who felt compelled to raise their voices in opposition to the decision to discontinue and withhold funding for the district's primary music education program.
During a recent school board meeting, former school board president, Debbie Wingo, emphatically referred to the site as a joke. Following this declaration, some of the largest defacement efforts to date were recorded. The defacement has come in the form of bogus signature entries on the site's petition, with entries such as 'Mic E Mouse' & 'Ben Dover', along with the names of several criminal and political figures, including Al Capone, John Gotti, Rudolph Giuliani, Al & Tipper Gore, and Bill, Hillary & Chelsea Clinton.
The 61 bogus defacement records were posted to the site in groups on different days spanning several months, with records from each group occurring within moments of each other from the same Internet address for each group of defacement records.
The school board was recently informed of the defacement and that due to our web server's log storage, access to the source addresses of the attacks was available, and thus the capability to trace the addresses to accounts of the offending user(s). Coincidentally, the next attack occurred on the morning of March 10, the day following the most recent board meeting, and the source of this attack came from the Stockton Public Library. This was the first time that attacks occurred from a public network, rather than from residential user accounts.
What is even more appalling is that one of the entries of this most recent and anonymous defacement attack included the name of our beloved and recently departed district band director, Roy Troglia. Disturbingly, Mr. Troglia's name was entered after his death.
Not only is this behavior pathetic and not funny, it has now become sick.
Click here for an entry listing of the defacement attacks.
Daniel Wells
Tracy