OSD changes procedures for on-campus sponsors, contracts
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Investigations are continuing at the American University in Cairo (AUC) into the university’s procedures for allowing companies to sponsor events or clubs on campus, according to the Office of Student Development (OSD).
The investigations will continue until the OSD and the university’s legal advisers make a final report and recommendations, said Ashraf El Fiqi, vice president for student affairs, who told the Caravan he is handling the matter personally.
In response to student concerns about a brokerage company that was one of the academic sponsors of the recent International Conference on Global Economy (ICGE), the OSD says it is revising its procedures for approving companies’ participation and the contracts it signs with them.
AUC’s legal advisers are revising the OSD’s contracts with sponsor companies to spell out that, “Any contractual agreement cannot be done with students without the university present,” said Aida Maged, director of student development.
“We will revise the clauses [of the contract] to avoid any problems in the future,” said Nadia Samy, AUC’s senior legal counsel
In addition, as a preliminary precaution, the OSD is holding a mandatory meeting to train all students involved in club or organization fundraising activities at AUC, in collaboration with the university’s legal advisors, development office, public relations consultants and a newly appointed fundraising consultant.
The meeting is scheduled for March 12, from 4:00 – 6:00 pm. Any students who do not attend will not be able to raise funds, said Maged.
The issue surfaced when a brokerage firm was approved as an academic sponsor of the ICGE, allegedly without a full background check on the company. As part of its conference sponsorship, the firm held a competition and awarded prizes that were not specifically stipulated in its contract with the university.
Questions arose after the student winners of the competition were asked to give bank account information—including account numbers and signatures—in order to open their trading accounts with their prize money. The procedure is normal for brokerage accounts, but routine checks of the company’s materials by Youssef Abdelaal, a graduating senior in accounting and third place winner, showed that the CD handed out to all participants included an invisible “keylogger” disguised as a PDF e-book.
The Ardamax keylogger on the CD, which is invisible to the user but can be detected by highly sophisticated anti-virus software, saves everything the user types in—including bank account numbers and signatures—and sends it to a designated email address.
Abdelaal went to the OSD when he discovered the keylogger through Windows Defender, a spyware protection software. He was concerned that his bank information could be accessed by third parties.
“I sent the CD to our IT department and they checked it on some of the best anti-virus programs, which are Norton, McAfee and Kaspersky. None of them returned a virus problem,” said the company’s marketing director and AUC alumni, about the keylogger.
“We didn’t know it was wrong,” said Ramy Ebeid, president of the ICGE, of the competition. He added that a large banner on campus, approved by the OSD, announced the competition, but that the office had not checked the banner’s contents before it was hung.
The aim of the competition was to enable students to compete trading foreign currencies in the global market, using a dummy account with $20,000 in virtual money for each student participant.
The first, second and third place winners were awarded live accounts containing $3,000, $2,000 and $1,000, respectively. To receive the prize, the students had to sign account agreement forms disclosing bank account information and their signatures.
After Abdelaal brought attention to the issue, Ashraf El-Fiqi, vice president for student affairs, told the Caravan that “proper actions” will be taken internally and externally because “we have to protect our students.”
“We have to get the three students and we have to close the brokerage accounts,” said Aida Maged, director of student organization activities at the OSD.
A representative of the company said the accounts have been closed and the contracts returned to AUC. AUC’s legal advisers confirmed this.
