diff --git a/components/motd.php b/components/motd.php
index 2c3eb66755f63d5624f4c710da226dfe304c5a05..00d960bbd5de5509f948dffa23a7db4275dea4d6 100644
--- a/components/motd.php
+++ b/components/motd.php
@@ -4,6 +4,7 @@ $motd_file = "/etc/motd";
 function decode_entities($text, $quote_style = ENT_COMPAT)
 {
     $text = html_entity_decode($text, $quote_style, 'ISO-8859-1'); // NOTE: UTF-8 does not work!
+    $text = preg_replace('~&ndash\;~i', '-', $text);
     $text = preg_replace_callback('~&#x([0-9a-f]+);~i',
                     function ($matches) {
                         foreach ($matches as $match) {
diff --git a/lib/validation.php b/lib/validation.php
index c39b3fad58e6f0b3ae1edf64e7f4b15fd3429e04..0c152c950f5e2cb7ab968a9271707a34fa0ea93d 100644
--- a/lib/validation.php
+++ b/lib/validation.php
@@ -125,7 +125,7 @@ function validSID($SID, $override)
             return true;
         }
     } else {
-        if (!preg_match("/^[0-9]*$/", $SID) || strlen($SID) != 6) {
+        if (!preg_match("/^[0-9]{6,}$/", $SID)) {
             $error = "Invalid student ID";
             return false;
         } elseif (sidUsed($SID)) {