This post was written by Hatchet reporter Zaid Shoorbajee

GW is investigating the cause of a campus-wide technology outage that forced several University services to go offline Friday.

David Steinour, chief information officer, said the cooling systems in GW’s Foggy Bottom data center failed, causing outages for services such as GWorld, the myGW portal and 4-RIDE for about seven hours.

“Computer and network equipment runs very hot and can reach temperatures over 100 degrees without cooling,” he said. The University is still looking into why the cooling systems crashed, he said.

The GWorld office posted on Facebook that it was experiencing connectivity problems with off-campus merchants Friday, and Gelman Library tweeted that public computers were unavailable.

Steinour said the IT division worked with facilities to cool down the data center, which houses GW’s computer systems and other devices.

He added that hardware and software applications were running without any glitches when the University restored the services.