Recently, a setback has occured at RCHS. The incident happened in room T16, the room of CTE teacher James Gerken, and the home of his courses such as architecture and engineering, and drone development. This incident is the deletion of the CAD (computer aided design) lab drive. This drive contained all files of the students from past years including this year. Files such as papers, architectural drawings, and 3D drawings were all lost. 

Junior Spencer Hickman is a student in Gerken’s Engineering II class, and was one of the students to lose all of his files.

“I lost almost everything from the past year of taking his class,” said Hickman, “Luckily this year I saved all of my work in Google Drive, so it did not affect me as much as it did others.”

Hickman was not the only person affected by the incident. Junior Zack Rogers is in the same class as Hickman and had a similar  experience.

“All my classmates have to start over on all their projects, and it is terrible,” said Rogers.

The deletion of the files on the drive is a felony. Technically, the perpetrator is destroying property of the students. Destruction of property is very illegal and can be punished with up to two and a half years in prison.

“I believe it is very fair for it to be illegal because it is someone’s work that they worked on for weeks, if not months,” said Hickman.

The person who deleted the files has not been found, but another incident is unlikely. Some of the files were recovered, but they were recovered as word documents, so all of the previous 3D files are lost for good. Some students, such as Hickman, saved their work on Google Drive, or on  a separate USB.

“I save all my work on a secondary source, Google Drive, because it backs everything up. If something like this happens again, I won’t be out of anything,” said Hickman.

It is recommended that students save all of their items such as drawings and papers on secondary sources so they can have backup for another incident like this one. Rogers gave a message for whoever deleted the files.

“It was a terrible thing you did to the other people, and you should really be ashamed of deleting all that hard work,” said Rogers.