Following the large, national Hands Off 2025 movement, students have been voicing their concerns over the battle to access the protest’s website on Marshall Wi-Fi. 

The URL, https://handsoff2025.com/, was blocked by the university’s system as of Thursday, April 10.

By the following Monday, the website was accessible. 

The original critiques came from an anonymous internet forum. 

“Can I just say it’s crazy the Hands Off protest website is blocked on MU Wi-fi,” one user wrote on the official YikYak Marshall page before the block was lifted.

Comments underneath the post discussed the website even further.

“How are more people not upset with the censorship we are receiving,” another anonymous user said. “This is not the only website blocked.”

Chief Information Officer Jodie Penrod said an URL filtering feature is responsible for students’ lack of access to the protest website and not the university. 

Marshall has utilized Palo Alto, a California-based cybersecurity company, since 2020. Palo Alto provides firewalls and other forms of internet protection.

The company blocks approximately a hundred thousand threats every 10 hours, Penrod said, with the URL filtering feature adding to that statistic. 

“Palo Alto’s URL Filtering is a comprehensive solution that protects networks from web-based threats by analyzing and categorizing URLs in real-time,” she said. “It utilizes machine learning to scan websites, determining their content and risk ratings.”

Penrod said the protest webpage was likely immediately blocked by Palo Alto due to the newness of the domain. 

“Palo Alto manages how they block certain firewalls that are high risk, and the Hands Off 2025 was a newly registered domain,” Penrod said. “That means somebody created that website within the last 30 days. A lot of times with those newly registered domains, they’ll block it instantaneously without really knowing what it is.” 

The university did not make the determination of blocking the website on their own, Penrod said. 

“We did not determine that Hands Off 2025 was a high risk site or anything like that,” Penrod said. “That was just something that was automatically done inside the Palo Alto firewall.”

The firewall is not the end-all-be-all. In fact, members of the Marshall community have the ability to request Palo Alto to allow certain websites.

Penrod gave a recent example of this.

“One of the local politicians in Huntington had a new site whenever they were campaigning for the election,” she said. “Our Palo recognized that as a newly registered site and blocked the site. We were able to work with Palo to get that off – recategorized.”

Students, faculty and staff members can submit a service desk ticket requesting a second glance toward a website. While recategorization cannot be guaranteed, Penrod said they will work with Palo Alto and investigate the website domain if requested.

“If there’s any questions, we’re always happy to have a conversation about it—give people more information,” she said. “It’s always a good thing to assume we have positive intent before we assume that people are just blocking things, because that’s definitely not what we are doing.”

In terms of the Hands Off 2025 website, Penrod said the university has not gotten any service requests to have the domain investigated.

However, as of Monday, April 14, the website domain is now accessible on Marshall Wi-Fi. 

Penrod said this is likely due to either a request separate from the university or the domain now being older. Palo Alto has now classified the site as “low risk.”

Service requests can be submitted on MyMU, underneath the “My Support” tab. Sites can also be tested directly on Palo Alto’s end here: Palo Alto Networks URL filtering – Test A Site

TIMELINE

– March 10, 2025: Hands Off 2025 domain is created

-Saturday, April 5: Hands Off 2025’s National Day of Action

-Week of Monday, April 7: Discussion of domain being blocked begins on Marshall University YikYak

-Thursday, April 10: Domain is confirmed to still be blocked on Marshall Wi-Fi

-Friday, April 11: Hands Off 2025 domain turns 32 days old

-Monday, April 14: Domain is confirmed to be accessible on Marshall Wi-Fi

Sarah Davis can be contacted at [email protected].