Cannot Access Login Pages; Website Hacked

The Brandeis Hoot, a college newspaper (thebrandeishoot.com), has had its old site hacked quietly. It has been posting spammy articles under a single author’s name, and when that author’s name is clicked, it goes to his actual work. As a possible solution, I was instructed to change the password of the Admin account that is known to us. There are probably several other Admin accounts that we do not have access to. When attempting to access the site’s dashboard to change the password through (/wp-admin) and (/wp-login), the site spat out an “Error establishing database connection” message, and later (with the /wp-login), an Error 404. After several hours, there has still been no successful access of a login page. The server is managed by the school’s technology department, but we want to make sure this is not an application level problem first before we do anything else.

Any advice on the matter would be greatly appreciated.