Students, alumni, and faculty at Williams college are issued a Unix ID by the Office for Information Technology. The Unix ID is a person's unique and concise login name used to access services such as:
- Novell NetWare
- Blackboard
- Unix
- Willipedia
- the WSO site
- JOSE
- Daily Messages
- pretty much everything that's not PeopleSoft
An undergraduate's Unix ID begins with the last two digits of his graduation year, followed by his initials, and possibly ending in _2, _3 or even _4 if several people have the same graduation year and initials. Faculty Unix IDs are the first letter of the first name followed by up to 7 letters of the surname. Graduate students' Unix IDs begin with "g", followed by the last two digits of the graduation year, followed by the initials. Guests (such as students from other colleges who come here for SMALL) have Unix IDs such as "guest11." Students in the Williams-Mystic Program have Unix IDs that begin with "wm" followed by the student's initials, but this ID is literally never used. High school students taking Williams classes are given IDs beginning with "sh" followed by the student's initials. Everyone with a Unix ID automatically gets a Public folder which stores up to 127 MB of files on the network.