"As very busy students, e-mail is our main form of communication," said Kate C. Ousley '01.
The problem was especially troublesome for students turning in theses on Friday, including Philosophy concentrators.
Not only were Harvard students unable to send or receive e-mail, but all Harvard websites were inaccessible.
In the end, FAS Network Systems determined that the problems lay with an "operating system bug" associated with new software that is intended to more efficiently control information flow through the Harvard network.
At the end of the second message, FAS Network Systems apologized for the system outage. Steen echoed those sentiments.
"With the network critical to so many aspects of Harvard life, an outage like we had today causes major inconvenience and loss of time," Steen said. "We apologize for this and our staff will continue to work to prevent a recurrence."