The comments here are almost entirely of one voice: UW bad. Student innocent.
It is not hard to find the policy in question. I quote from the UW Registrar's website, their policy on tampering and abuse of the registration system, as cited in the subject of the email the student received:
> The registration system is provided for the sole express purpose for students to register themselves into sections. Any use of the registration system other than for this purpose is considered abuse of the system. Such abuse includes, but is not limited to, buying or selling one’s seat in a class, holding seats for another student, or otherwise registering for a section that one has no intention of taking. [0]
The student's project, though well-intentioned, is in clear violation of this policy. And it ought to be forbidden. There are plenty of ways this kind of a system could go wrong, including creating incentives to overregister or develop a registration black market, not to mention the technical liabilities of letting a bot talk to the database at bot-speed.
Now, as for follow-up conversations the student and the university have had, we have not seen these emails. We have only heard the student's own summary, which, given the high stakes and personally significant impact, may very well have been editorialized so that the university looks unreasonable and the student reasonable.
I, for one, cannot pass such quick and single-minded judgment as everyone else without seeing these emails.
[0] https://registrar.washington.edu/registration/policies-proce...