By Ted Bridis
The Associated Press

WASHINGTON - Still recovering from a summer of Internet infections, colleges are taking unusually aggressive steps to protect campus computer networks from virus outbreaks.

Students returning to classes are finding themselves summarily unplugged if their computers are infected. Oberlin College in Ohio is threatening to fine students $25 for inadvertently spreading a virus.

"When you're drowning, you try to do something quick," said John Bucher, Oberlin's director of information technology. "We're really stressed by this whole thing." Bucher said the network suffered "near meltdown" on Aug. 21, when the first returning students arrived on campus with badly infected computers.

Back-to-back waves of devastating infections that spread quickly across the Internet during August crippled some college and high school networks just before the start of the fall semester. The attacks overwhelmed many technology departments already starved for employees and money.

At the University of North Texas, technicians are removing viruses from roughly 16 computers every 90 minutes - plus assessing a mandatory $30 cleaning fee. Students who have infections cleaned from their computers off campus must show proof before they're allowed to log back onto the school network.

Vanderbilt University found infections in computers of roughly one-fourth its returning 5,000 students. Stunned technicians shut off connections to nearly 1,200 computers they determined were infected and gradually restored service over the next several days after ensuring each machine was clean.

Salisbury University in Maryland shut down its entire network for students in residence halls for one day, even after employees spent two weeks cleaning 500 school computers. The shutdown stranded students who use the network to check class schedules and order meal tickets.

"It just starts firing all this traffic across your network so it slows everybody down," said Jerry Waldron, the school's chief information officer. "If we didn't do anything at all, it would slow our entire network down to a crawl."

It's never been a more challenging time to run a computer network on campus. Unlike managers in corporations, college officials provide Internet connections for student computers over which they have little direct control. These high-speed networks are powerful, widely distributed across campuses and purposely left open to help in the sharing of data.

Technology departments complain they aren't given enough employees, money or respect - yet they're the first ones called when the networks fail. Many rely on student volunteers, because federal or state money available to buy equipment often can't be spent to pay employees to maintain it.