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I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

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Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#41

Post by impendia »

jdkaim wrote: post #7

Update: I immediately took down my class project site after receiving yesterday’s ultimatum. I still don’t think the simple demo site violated the letter or spirit of the registration rules, but I took it down because I always want to operate in good faith. They followed up today to thank me for doing it, but also indicated that they were putting a hold on my account anyway. As a result, I am not going to be able to…

I'm a university professor, and this is batshit crazy.

Who? As in not "they" or "the university", but who within the university? Can you tell where the directive is coming from?

If this comes from, say, the Provost's Office then this probably can't be handled internally. (The position of Provost is the #2 position at a university, and the provost usually runs the show while the President or Chancellor goes schmoozing with donors.)

But if it's coming from the Registrar's Office, then the Registrar doesn't have that much power internally, and you might be able to fight this decision within the university. What they did is not only brazenly immoral, it is also a tremendous legal liability for UW, and it should and might be a firing offense for whoever is responsible. And quite frankly no matter what happens I would seriously consider hiring an attorney (you might find one who will work on contingency).

You might speak with any professors in the department you have a good relationship with; I would be very surprised if they were sympathetic to this decision.

You might also talk with the university ombudsman, Dean of Students, etc. -- although I would be a little bit cautious and polite here. Just calmly describe the situation and ask what you should do in this situation. Hopefully (but this is very far from certain), they will calmly offer to intervene on your behalf, and then they will go ballistic behind closed doors and absolutely rake the Registrar over the coals. In any case, be poker faced, don't fully trust them, and avoid committing to a particular course of action if you don't have to.

Finally, here's an amusing hack. Salaries at UW are public record. If you want to find out how important any individual person is in the hierarchy, look up how much money they make. It's a fairly accurate barometer.

https://fiscal.wa.gov/Staffing/Salaries

Universities are not monoliths, and the relationships between different power centers are usually mistrustful at best.

Best of luck to you.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#42

Post by crystal_revenge »

Aurornis wrote: post #21

I have several friends on the administrative side at Universities. The two things you have to realize is that there are an incredible number of administrative staff at Universities and they're extremely territorial. You rocked someone's boat and they got upset. They have a lot of time on their hands because there are so, so many people in administration. Now they're coming after you like it's their job. I think you'r…

I've spent quite a bit of time in academia and was going to post something similar. Universities, no matter how great, are filled to the brim with petty bureaucrats just itching to exert whatever meager power they wield over someone whenever they get the chance.

> So be loud, but polite.

Fully agree. In academia problems don't get fixed until it's more annoying to not fix it. The more attention this gets the more likely a petty bureaucrat above the one responsible for this will realize their day just significantly more annoying and will likely squash it quickly and quietly.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#44

Post by unethical_ban »

Best of luck. It sounds like you really pissed someone off by threatening some internal power structure or process they controlled. I hope you don't keep quiet about this - I know it's easy to say when I'm watching from the sidelines, but don't let them coerce you into silence!

About a decade ago, some teammates and I built an internal request system for our Ops team to replace the MS Sharepoint crap we were using. We used Bottle, BootstrapJS and SQLite to get it up and going quickly, and under the radar. Our customer IT teams loved it, and managers from elsewhere in our department were even asking half-jokingly if we could support their teams, too.

Well, the IT team that was deploying ServiceNOW was none too happy that a "non-standard" application was running... our manager was a knight and kept them from making us tear it down. We pretended to play ball, we walked through SNOW process of getting a team-specific form to build out. And then we never used it; we kept directing our customers to the self-built tool.

The moral is, people like their fiefdoms. Bureaucrats often shun innovation because it has the chance to make them obsolete, or else they are simply the kind of people who don't like disruption.

You may also have invented a tool that would have obsoleted some multimillion dollar software acquisition or internal process, who knows.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#45

Post by quickthrowman »

theturtletalks wrote: post #12
pockmarked19 wrote: post #5

That’s just how colleges are. I once reported to my alma mater that a somewhat obscure (but obviously public) link seemed to trigger the download of a zip of student details for no discernible reason (I think it was a WIP site), and they immediately threatened to call the FBI on me. I just sort of laughed it off, but I decided that was the last time I was going to initiate any sort of contact with them if I didn’t ab…

Wasn't a government agency rendering citizen SSNs client-side and when someone discovered it, they went after them? Wouldn't be surprised if the anti-DRM part of the DMCA is used to persecute these non-crimes.

Yes, that was in MO. Their idiot governor threatened the journalist that discovered it with prosecution.

An investigation by the Missouri State Patrol and a MO county later determined that the executive branch screwed up and leaked the SSNs and that the reporter committed no crime.

https://krebsonsecurity.com/2022/02/report-missouri-governor...

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#46

Post by mbreese »

ryandrake wrote: post #13

Why would the school admin go nuclear over a request to integrate with the registration system, a system that is clearly intended to be used by applications: > “The Student Web Service gives your application access to information in the Student database such as course data, registration data, section data, person data, and term data (general academic data).” It doesn't make any sense. Was there something left out of…

My guess is that those integration points are intended to be used by University owned and operated services. Having a service that the University doesn't control wanting to do this would be difficult to get approval. Student data is highly protected (legally), so access to it through another application (where the operators could see other students' data) is problematic.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#47

Post by jasinjames »

theturtletalks wrote: post #12
pockmarked19 wrote: post #5

That’s just how colleges are. I once reported to my alma mater that a somewhat obscure (but obviously public) link seemed to trigger the download of a zip of student details for no discernible reason (I think it was a WIP site), and they immediately threatened to call the FBI on me. I just sort of laughed it off, but I decided that was the last time I was going to initiate any sort of contact with them if I didn’t ab…

Wasn't a government agency rendering citizen SSNs client-side and when someone discovered it, they went after them? Wouldn't be surprised if the anti-DRM part of the DMCA is used to persecute these non-crimes.

I think you're thinking of this case [1] from Missouri where a reporter notified the state that teacher SSNs were exposed, and the Governor went ballistic. Luckily, it seems like the local law enforcement set the record straight.

[1] https://apnews.com/article/technology-business-crime-educati...

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#48

Post by mardef »

theturtletalks wrote: post #12
pockmarked19 wrote: post #5

That’s just how colleges are. I once reported to my alma mater that a somewhat obscure (but obviously public) link seemed to trigger the download of a zip of student details for no discernible reason (I think it was a WIP site), and they immediately threatened to call the FBI on me. I just sort of laughed it off, but I decided that was the last time I was going to initiate any sort of contact with them if I didn’t ab…

Wasn't a government agency rendering citizen SSNs client-side and when someone discovered it, they went after them? Wouldn't be surprised if the anti-DRM part of the DMCA is used to persecute these non-crimes.

Missouri Governor was the one going after them for viewing the source of a public webpage.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=28866805

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#49

Post by impendia »

ryandrake wrote: post #13

Why would the school admin go nuclear over a request to integrate with the registration system, a system that is clearly intended to be used by applications: > “The Student Web Service gives your application access to information in the Student database such as course data, registration data, section data, person data, and term data (general academic data).” It doesn't make any sense. Was there something left out of…

There are strict privacy laws (e.g. FERPA) which university administrators are terrified of violating and getting sued over.

Meanwhile, most university "enterprise" software is a festering pile of shit.

I'm very surprised by the extortion attempt, but sadly a massive overreaction doesn't much surprise me.

Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled

#50

Post by unethical_ban »

nayuki wrote: post #43

As a non-student, I received an overzealous takedown request from the University of Washington a decade ago. https://github.com/nayuki/Reference-Huffman-coding/issues/1 Also related: https://meta.stackoverflow.com/questions/295420/how-to-cope-...

That is hilariously naive.

Particularly in the age of AI, professors might have to go back to the practice of oral exams to have people demonstrate their understanding of an issue. The problem for universities is that means you have to have a lower student:teacher ratio.

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