UPDATE: Professor Bloomfield put up this message on Lou’s List today: “Lou’s List is Safe for Now: I just talked with VP James Hilton and he assures me that ITS does not want to shut down Lou’s List. He and I will talk soon about trying to coordinate our efforts, but plesae rest assured that nothing is going to happen to Lou’s List at this point. To those of you who voiced your support to me and to the administration, please accept my gratitude.”

Courtesy of Prof. Bloomfield's personal homepage

One of UVa students’ most popular scheduling resources – Lou’s List - is at risk of shutting down. Created and run by physics professor Louis Bloomfield in 2006, the site provides a simpler and easier to understand compilation of UVa courses compared to the much less user-friendly SIS (Student Information System). Despite its’ popularity among students, the University does not recognize nor fund the site and has caused Professor Bloomfield to send this email to students July 31:

In the spirit of “no good deed goes unpunished,” I am again taking heat for Lou’s List. I’m so upset and discouraged at the moment, that I’m on the verge of giving up and shutting the site down. If you have any interest in my keeping Lou’s List going, please contact the administration and ask your colleagues to do so as well.
Best wishes,
Lou

In addition to this message, Bloomfield included a series of emails exchanged between him and administrators from the University’s Information Technology Services displaying the multitude of complaints he’s received in the last couple of days. The email exchanges blame Bloomfield’s site for overloading SIS on July 30 during its routine data retrieval and request a meeting to discuss “another option for getting this data.” Bloomfield responded explaining that Lou’s List did not do anything different on July 30 than on any other day, explaining “During the period of the graph (12:20pm to 1:20pm on July 30, 2012), my computer maintained 0 or 1 active session on SIS. If SIS was overwhelmed by as many as 10+ active sessions, some other computer(s) was probably responsible.” After a repeated request to meet, Bloomfield expressed his frustration, saying “If SIS cannot tolerate the minimally intrusive data-mining required for Lou’s List, perhaps it is time for me to shut Lou’s List down. I’m tired of responding to complaints.”