Students are running a covert ‘Epsteinathon’ event on 11 February as an activity for informatics students to “use the files” as tools to uncover the hidden “atrocities” within them.
On 5 February, posters detailing the event appeared in Appleton Tower with scarce information; the location and the potential prizes to be won were redacted.
Image provided by Sarina Maloy for The Student.
Although the event has been approved by the university, the poster provided a QR code to join a Discord server where more details and the hidden location will be revealed.
An informatics student — one of the co-runners of the event — explained the ‘Epsteinathon’ to The Student:
“The goal is to get computer science students to use their skills to uncover more about the files.
“Most people don’t realise that a lot of uncovered information is actually in there but is just obscured by the sheer volume of information.”
Though computer science students are the primary targets of the ‘Epsteinathon’, the event runners encourage anyone with a background in or knowledge of data science to participate.
“We’re not poking fun at the situation, that’s not what this is,” the event correspondent emphasised. “We just really want to dig deeper and find things out.”
However, other students were sceptical of the idea: “it’s a poor reflection on our student community to satirise the experiences of victims of gender-based violence.”
“CMAP – Institut DATAIA Data Science Summer School” by Ecole polytechnique / Paris / France is licensed under CC BY-SA 2.0.