[August 25, 2011] Muskegon Police Investigate Baker College Hackers Tweet Aug 25, 2011 (WXMI-TV - McClatchy-Tribune Information Services via COMTEX) -- GRAND RAPIDS, Mich.-- For more than a year, police in Muskegon have been investigating a handful of students who may have hacked into the Baker College network to change grades, add courses, and change degrees. A former student has come forward, saying his computer classmates from a year ago approached him about the idea when he was unhappy with the direction of his college career. "I was going full time all year round for four and a half years and walked away with an associate's degree," the student told FOX 17. He said the whiz-kids explained they had changed records themselves by breaking into the school's system and not gotten caught. "They were just able to add in classes that weren't taken and put me closer to my graduation date and they were able to do that no problem," he said. He said it went unnoticed until he switched degree programs. A department chairperson asked him about a class that he had supposedly taken. The problem is that the chairperson was also the teacher of the class. The man got a call from campus security, then the Muskegon Police, who seized all his computer equipment. Now a year later, he is wondering why there are still no charges. But so what does that mean about the safety of student data? "No students' files were altered, other than the students who were investigated," said Lee Coggin, President of Baker College. Coggin said it was the school that caught it, but he would not comment whether it caused them to enhance their security. The man we interviewed has been kicked out of Baker and said he can't get his transcript. He's working on getting a lawyer who will help him get his stuff back. He feels he only broke the rules because the school forced him to take matters into his own hands. "It wasn't wrong, but I felt that Baker had done me wrong, so I'm just trying to get myself back on track." Police would not give a timeline for completion of the investigation. ___ (c)2011 WXMI-TV (Grand Rapids, Mich.) Visit WXMI-TV (Grand Rapids, Mich.) at www.fox17online.com Distributed by MCT Information Services [ Back To TMCnet.com's Homepage ]