Update Tuesday, 10 a.m: Blackboard appears to be working once again and has been since 1 a.m., according to an announcement on the Blackboard website. The UO Blackboard team was apparently unable to find a root cause of the problems and have not yet put in place a long-term solution, but they believe that the website is now stable.
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Blackboard is down across campus — the Emerald offices included — and students have reported being kicked off or otherwise unable to access the service on the first day of finals week. It has reportedly been down since at least 3:50 p.m.
Helen Chu, director of academic technology, sent an email to an IT listserv informing recipients of the outage.
“UO Libraries & Information Services are aware and are working on the issue. Updates will be provided as information becomes available,” she wrote.
A source in the University’s IT department says the cause of the outage is unknown. Phone calls to information services department officials around campus have gone unanswered thus far, likely because the issue is presently being hammered out.
Students are taking to Twitter for answers:

Hey @univ_of_oregon , your Blackboard server is down…during my final
— Mark Lavis (@mark_lavis) March 18, 2013

Blackboard being down during Finals week? NOT cool #DamnYouFinals
— Mandy Shold (@WayToRepresent) March 18, 2013

Slow clap for UO blackboard. How could you crash during finals week. #Blackboard #frustration
— Alex Slack (@Slack_Alex) March 18, 2013

Blackboard won’t let me log in. This is the world telling me to watch Netflix.
— Chloe Hayhurst (@ChloeHayhurst) March 18, 2013

 
Students at other college campuses, including Ball State University, have reported on Twitter that the site is also down for them although it is likely unrelated.
Update 5:48 p.m.: Blackboard access, if a bit spotty, has been restored. The service’s home page for University of Oregon students appears to work intermittently on OS X versions of Google Chrome, Firefox and Safari.
Update 6:40 p.m.: The following appeared on the University’s IT services status site at 6 p.m.:
“Shortly after 3:30 p.m. today, Blackboard began running very slowly or failed to respond entirely. Library and Information Services staff are currently working to find the cause of the problem and plan to have Blackboard back up as soon as possible.”
IT is working with Blackboard support to get things back online.
Students began circulating a petition on social media to get Tuesday finals canceled. As of this post, it had over 1,500 signatures.