“I knew it was a problem because I've used the SIS so much. I felt like it was super hard to see all the information about a class easily,” Campbell said. “To me, it was like a fun problem to figure out how I could make it easier.”

Little did he know that not requiring an MSU NetID to access the site, making it public, would violate a campus safety policy implemented in 2024.

Spartan Scheduler prioritized cutting down class scheduling time for students, focusing on information that students want to see first, such as course availability. The website utilized an AI schedule creator, which surveyed users about their class and time preferences and would generate a pre-made schedule based on available classes.

MSUgrades.com and RateMyProfessor.com were also integrated into the site so that students could see everything in one place. You could even tell the AI to prioritize classes with higher average grades or professors with higher RMP ratings.

In the first couple of weeks, he was met with an influx of 14,000 visitors and thankful students messaging him personally about the site. Having only marketed the site on Reddit and Snapchat, Campbell said it gained most of its traction from people naturally clicking on the site while searching the web.

Neuroscience and psychology freshman Shreya Mishra said that one of the biggest benefits of Spartan Scheduler was the ability to see your schedule and how classes could fit into it without having to switch between pages, which she has to do with MSU’s SIS.

“Everyone obviously has troubles with the SIS system. It's not great,” Mishra said. “So, when it [Spartan Scheduler] was first marketed as a better alternative to see classes, I feel like that was probably why there was that initial huge interest in it.”

With that being said, the site came with some significant flaws that she pointed out. First, the website's many moving parts made it more difficult to learn how to use, and it didn’t end up saving Mishra as much time as she thought it would. In addition, she was already weary about the AI integration due to privacy concerns, and when the AI started giving her random classes, such as an engineering course, it further discouraged her.

With three months of work put into the site before it was launched, Campbell planned on making improvements to issues like these. After receiving strong positive feedback from students, he had more motivation than ever to continue spending his time perfecting the tool.

The glory of Campbell’s two-week viral success shrunk in an instant when he was driving to Tennessee and received a jolting email from MSU SIS, informing him that his website was a threat to public safety. From the passenger’s seat, Campbell apologetically followed the instructions in the email titled, “Urgent: You may be suspended from MSU,” and took his site down within five minutes of receiving it.

The attached letter instructed him to call a number within 24 hours of the email being sent to schedule a meeting to discuss a possible interim suspension ahead of the formal resolution of the disciplinary complaint, citing the seriousness of the allegations.

With no prior disciplinary record at MSU, Campbell hoped for a punishment that matched the threat he felt he posed to campus. He worried that marketing the site on Reddit as “replacing MSU’s horrible class search” angered the director of MSU SIS, who reported him, and wondered if she would make sure to seal his disciplinary fate.

In a statement, Communications Manager for Media and Public Information Mark Bullion said that the student conduct process is structured and impartial.

“The university is responsible for ensuring that this process is conducted in a confidential, professional, and neutral environment, in compliance with all applicable state and federal privacy laws.”

In the days leading up to the start of the fall 2025 semester, the thought of suspension loomed over him.

“What started as a tool I built solely to help students almost got me kicked out of the university,” Campbell said. “For the entirety of the conduct process, I thought that was my fate.”

There are multiple reasons why Campbell’s site was flagged. He utilized his MSU log-in credentials to access the private class data, using something called web-scraping to extract large amounts of class schedule data and feed it into his system.

Additionally, an MSU NetID wasn’t required to access the site, which gave the public access to information such as class time, location, and instructor. Such information was deemed sensitive by the university fairly recently.

These infractions go against MSU’s Selected Policies and Acceptable Use of Computing Systems as well as the General Student Regulations.

As of February 2024, class information such as days, times, location, and instructor were no longer publicly available on the Office of the Registrar website. This decision was supported in part by the desire for more security measures on campus.

While initially working on the site, Campbell was unaware of the closing of MSU’s public class records, and wanted the information to be public for website traffic flow purposes. That way, people could simply search for any MSU class online, and his website would immediately pop up. An MSU email verification also seemed like a hassle, and Campbell wanted to keep the site simple for users.

“I was kind of just going off the assumption that I'm not really hurting anything, but, obviously, I had to think about it more than that, and I should have done more planning beforehand,” Campbell said. “They cited some policies that I've never seen before.”

Although she was a prior user of the site, Mishra said she agrees that the publicity of the site was a security issue, especially since a lot of buildings are open during the day without keycards.

“I wasn't at MSU during the shooting, but I was nearby. I'm from Okemos High School, so I was literally just 10 minutes away from all of that happening,” Mishra said. “So, that was a big thing for me. I would have to side with MSU in this scenario, just because the big thing for me is always security.”

Some say that the security threat was not a tangible issue, and that MSU SIS pursued suspending Campbell out of spite for the website and to set a standard. Campbell's friend, electrical engineering junior Gavin Owel, would agree.

“I was pretty shocked about the punishment they gave him. I thought that it was quite harsh for what his intentions were, even though they said it was a security issue,” Owel said. “I thought it was made with good intentions.”

About a week before fall classes started, on Aug. 18, Campbell finally knew that he would have a normal start to his semester. In the first meeting for his student conduct case with Dean of Students Allyn R. Shaw, it was determined that he wasn’t a current threat to campus security. Interim suspension wouldn’t be his fate for now, pending the final outcome of his case.

In the following week or so, Campbell went through the student conduct process, meeting with the student conduct coordinator and an ASMSU representative, where they reviewed the complaint, his rights and responsibilities, and a variety of conflict resolution options.

In student conduct cases, students have the decision to either accept punishment from the university or to contest their allegations by taking the case to trial. In Campbell’s case, he said that the university cited so many policies he violated that he felt like it was too complicated to contest them.

Furthermore, he felt like they didn’t explain what would happen if he decided to fight the allegations, and instead said it felt like they were trying to scare him away from that option.

“I accepted the guilt because it was either that or go in front of a trial,” Campbell said. “I just didn't want to deal with all that. So, I was like, I'll just accept the charges.”

In his last conduct meeting on Aug. 27, he was given his punishments, or what MSU calls "sanctions." First, Campbell received a deferred suspension, meaning he could continue to stay on campus and go to classes, but if he violated his sanctions or any university policies, he would be suspended for a full semester or longer, depending on the circumstances.

Should he violate any additional policies and be given that suspension, he would no longer be allowed on campus, and failure to abide by that could result in his arrest, the extension of his suspension, or removal from the university.

Essentially, his punishment is a suspension hanging over his head for the remainder of his time at MSU, which was more than two academic years at the time it was given. If he violates any university policy, he will be suspended for at least one full semester.

“I could understand that being used in cases of abuse or assault or something like that, or really just anything with negative intentions, but I was not trying to harm anything,” Campbell said. “And I made that clear in the meetings that led up to that. So, I was just really confused.”

In addition to the deferred suspension, Campbell was required to write an apology letter to the director of MSU SIS Deb Dotterer, who originally reported him, despite never having met her. He was also sanctioned to write an essay reflecting on the importance of his personal values, if his violations of university policies aligned with them, and how he plans to embody those values moving forward. He chose the values of contribution, hard work, honesty, making a difference and service.

“After over a month of reflection, I do honestly believe that Spartan Scheduler was in-line with all five of my core values,” Campbell wrote. “While I understand there were safety risks associated with the software and I still regret going about Spartan Scheduler the way I did, there is no doubt that I created it with the intention of helping students.”

Not only did he lose 500+ hours of work, but his respect and trust for the university administration and motivation to work on similar projects were gutted.

“I just want to graduate without any more hiccups like that,” Campbell said.

Campbell wished the university would have taken some of his ideas into consideration for the SIS to improve the student experience of scheduling classes.

“If we do give it the proper security and it's in conjunction with the university, I don't see how it would be anything but beneficial,” Campbell said.

Bullion stated that Michigan State University values input from students and the broader community regarding institutional policies and procedures, and remains committed to the continuous improvement of the overall student experience.