Some alumni have questioned the university’s handling of the theft of a hard drive from the office of Student Affairs earlier this month, and some university officials have expressed concern over potential fallout with alumni. Philip Inglima (CAS ’84, LAW ’88), president of the Georgetown University Alumni Association, said that the university’s reputation could be damaged by the incident, which was covered nationwide. The hard drive contained about 38,000 names, addresses and Social Security numbers of individuals affiliated with the university, including 25,000 alumni. Inglima said the alumni response has been less intense than he would have anticipated but that he has still seen frustration among alumni. “Obviously, no one is feeling happy or good about this. It’s a very regrettable event.” Inglima said that the university must identify an action plan for anyone who is affected by this. “A couple people have said they want to wait and see how things are resolved before donating,” said William O’Leary (GRD ’98), associate vice president for marketing and communications for the Office of Advancement, who was also on the list of affected alumni. He said that it was too early to determine exactly how the incident would affect donations. Jay Kirkham (GRD ’05) said he was disappointed with the university, especially as an alumnus. “For a university that is dependent upon alumni for donations, this is low,” he said. “I think my relationship with the school has changed,” he added. “My family has a history with the school going back to 1930 with giving. This will definitely affect my future giving.” Kirkham said that he noticed strange activity on his credit card statement last week and lost about $20,000. It has not been confirmed that this is related to the theft of the hard drive. “I sent an e-mail to Student Affairs and I left a message on the fabulous phone line,” he added. “I’ve yet to hear a response from anyone at the school. Secret Service responded to me.” Katie Fabian (SFS ’99) said she was most disappointed by the university’s response time. “I’m a little shocked that it took so long to notify us,” she said. She added that she found the broadcast e-mail sent Tuesday by University Information Security vague and unspecific. David Lambert, vice president and chief information officer for University Information Service, said that the almost-four-week delay between the discovery of the missing hard drive and notification of the university community was because of the labor-intensive process of determining the range of information on the device. Lambert said that the effect of the incident on donations did not play a role in the university’s decision on when to release the information. “Do we care about the university’s reputation? Certainly we do,” Lambert said. “Is that driving our decisions about how to release information? No.” O’Leary said that the Office of Advancement is attempting to keep lines of communication between the university and alumni as open as possible. The Office of Advancement sent an e-mail to approximately 51,000 alumni not affected by the incident on Tuesday night, informing them of the information breach, according to O’Leary. University spokesperson Julie Bataille said there have now been two hotlines created to assist alumni. “In addition to the [main information] hotline, the Office of Advancement has set up a hotline as well,” Bataille said. “It was important for us to be able to allow the alumni to contact us directly,” O’Leary said. “[Wednesday] we got about 30 phone calls and [Thursday] we got about seven or eight calls.” He said his office also received between 50 and 60 e-mails on Wednesday. The total count of e-mails received on Thursday was not available at the time. “We have been able to get back to all the people who have called or e-mailed in the past few days,” O’Leary added. “The vast majority are people calling to see if they were on the list. That’s about 90 percent of the calls,” he said. “There have been a handful of people who have called or e-mailed because they are upset.” – HOYA Staff Writers Stephen Santulli and Michele Hong contributed to this report.