Your directories on the Alpha's are AFS directories in the ECE cell. 
Your home directory was set up allowing read/list access by anyone.  To
make things more secure, you should do your work in a directory that
has more restrictive access (i.e., just you & your partners). 

Curiously, the command "fs" on these machines references a command in
the X library.  You need to explicitly reference /usr/afs/bin/fs to get
the familiar AFS file protection command.

So, assuming your partners have ID's xx347 and yy347 should do
something like:

mkdir private
/usr/afs/bin/fs sa private system:authuser none
/usr/afs/bin/fs sa private system:anyuser none
/usr/afs/bin/fs sa private xx347 write
/usr/afs/bin/fs sa private yy347 write


Randy Bryant
Computer Science Dept.
Carnegie Mellon University
Pittsburgh, PA 15213
412-268-8821
Randy.Bryant@cs.cmu.edu
http://www.cs.cmu.edu/~bryant