Crimson Wrong About Digitas

On Feb. 13, Chana Schoenberger and the Crimson reported that the Digitas website, Course Decision Assistant 2.0 (CDA), has drawn "CUE Fire." The article needlessly sensationalizes the situation and misrepresents both the content of the CDA and the intentions of Digitas.

First, we address the incorrect facts used in the article. Schoenberger reports that 4,100 computers have accessed CDA since January 19th. In fact, only 1,400 computers have done so. Also, student CUE member James Grimmelmann is described in the article as being affiliated with Digitas. In fact, although both the president and technical director of Digitas know Grimmelman personally, no official affiliation exists, as he is not a member.

Although neither of these facts are particularly critical, their misreporting disturbs us, and suggests that the article was written with little care for accuracy.

Also at issue is the order of the story's presentation. On the front page, Schoenberger writes that "committee members voiced concerns that the Digitas site might give individuals from outside Harvard access to privileged information." However, it isn't until almost the end of the article that she adds that Digitas enforces a webpage access policy that is as restrictive as, if not more than, that of the University. These two facts, properly reported, should come one after the other.

Second, there is the accusation made by Justin Funches, manager of information services at the Crimson, that Digitas has done things in the "wrong spirit". In fact, it is Funches and Matt Kramer, business manager for the Crimson, who have done things in the "wrong spirit." The day after CDA was released, they called Alex Wong, Digitas President, citing the appropriation of value of the Crimson's Confi Guide. Funches eventually apologized and dropped the matter. For Funches to come back weeks later and claim again that Digitas had somehow done something that infringed on the Crimson's rights is, very simply, silly.

Finally, we would like to clarify the manner in which CDA does interact with both the CUE and Confi information. CDA is a searchable index to these webpages which is not unlike the systems provided by major web search engines like Yahoo! CDA provides links to the CUE and Confi websites, as other search engines do, and does not duplicate their content.

Digitas is an organization committed to enriching the student community through technology. We created CDA with the intent of helping students to make faster, more informed decisions about their courses. The thousands of accesses to the website is a testament to its usefulness, and we have received nothing but positive response from users. Digitas hopes to continue to offer and improve on CDA in the coming semesters. --Alex Wong '98-99, President   --Ken Shan '99, Technical Director, Digitas