I'm surprised this is upvoted so much. All we have is a LinkedIn post and a GitHub repo. We haven't seen any of the original emails/writing from UW, not have we heard UW's view.
Am I being overly skeptical here?
I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled
291–300 of 737 posts
Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled
#292Also... do you have the whole post somewhere. I didn't get past Microsoft's registration wall. It only let me see the first couple of lines.
Microsoft? Or LinkedIn?
I had completely forgotten that LinkedIn is fully owned by Microsoft.
Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled
#293Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am not planning to get a lawyer involved as I have faith that UW leadership will make it right in the end. All evidence so far indicates they will not make it right, but instead they may make it even worse. Your faith is wildly misplaced. Seriously, talk to a lawyer. Keep in mind, just because you seek advice from a lawyer doesn't mean you need to take legal action against the school. Talking to a lawyer is not a…
Also, merely them knowing you have a lawyer instantly reframes the problem in their eyes. The path of least resistance to dealing with a "problematic" student is making the student go away. The path of least resistance to dealing with a "problematic" student with a lawyer is making the lawyer go away. All of a sudden bureaucrats will be getting visits from internal legal departments asking very pointed questions abou…
Yes and.
Yes, and even if it doesn't go to court, the university will know that it will cost them time and money.
It's entirely possible that university president or higher administration is unaware of the situation, and if they were, will intervene. The best way to do that is to have it brought to their attention via a legal letter, which then means they need to bring in their lawyers.
A good lawyer for the university won't want to fight because fighting is not in the best interest of the university. A good lawyer will say "We threatened the student with this? No good can come of that... let him register, let him graduate and make this all go away."
That doesn't mean the client (the university) will take it, but overall fighting isn't in their interest either.
Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled
#294I wanted to chime in with some advice that also can help in any situation involving long administrative processes. I'm sorry you're going through this and I really hope some of this can be helpful. - Write stuff down! A paper trail is helpful both to prevent hearsay and keep your own timeline of events in check. Recency bias and the like are too common in stressful situations. - Remember that you are one (1) human wh…
The last point is wisdom that I only acquired over time. I also used to be very aggressive in publicly attacking institutions, like TFA, and it definitely has downsides, even with best intentions of calling out injustice.
Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled
#295Interesting. I graduated from the _other_ UW (University of Warsaw) and our uni has course-swapping capability built into the University Study Service System (USOS)[1]. FYI public university education is fully government-funded in Poland (i.e. it is free for students). 1 - https://usosweb.mimuw.edu.pl/kontroler.php?_action=news%2Fde...
I'm from New Zealand, and this kind of stuff isn't a thing where I went (as far as I'm aware). Course enrolments open at some point (everything all at once), and you just log in and fill it out at some point over the multiple months between it opening and the due date for completing it. Some programs have limited admission (with their associated papers being restricted to those enrolled in that program), but limited space at the paper level (as opposed to the course level) and rushing to submit your paper selection just isn't a thing (as far as I'm aware).
Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled
#296The 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 th…
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Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled
#297Earlier quoted context omitted.
> I am not planning to get a lawyer involved as I have faith that UW leadership will make it right in the end. All evidence so far indicates they will not make it right, but instead they may make it even worse. Your faith is wildly misplaced. Seriously, talk to a lawyer. Keep in mind, just because you seek advice from a lawyer doesn't mean you need to take legal action against the school. Talking to a lawyer is not a…
Just piling on here because upvotes are not visible. The one thing you can guarantee is that your good faith is not reciprocated by the university. Get a lawyer. To make it easier: it sounds like you're still registered. University of Washington offers Student Legal Services ( https://depts.washington.edu/slsuw/ ). Set up a referral with one of them and talk to them. Even if they're employees of the university and do…
Also worth noting that it would be incredibly naive to expect good faith to be reciprocated by any institution at all throughout the course of one's life, which sounds cynical, but lets be real. If there's a way that almost any institution or person that you're transacting with in good faith—including schools, workplaces, lawyers, medical professionals, the leader of your country, sometimes family, whatever—can get away with fucking you over, they might. Not always, but expect it. Which reminds me, I need to pester a doctor about a web design invoice.
Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled
#298Update: 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…
Bro, fuck them. Put the site back online.
Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled
#299Earlier quoted context omitted.
Because even if you "win", you now have all of those lovely legal bills that the lawyer sends you. If you loose, you now have all of those lovely legal bills that the lawyer sends you. So the lawyer wins either way.
All campuses have student legal aid offices. I engaged one once myself when I was in university. Even though the complaint is against the University itself, in this case, attorneys are still subject to strict ethical rules and so you can at the very least get an honest read on the situation at a very low or no cost to you. (if they clearly demonstrate a conflict of interest, then you'll have an easy pro-bono case fro…
You can't use the student aid legal office, which is part of the university, to help you sue the university. That's a non-waivable conflict.
Re: I had to take down my course-swapping site or be expelled
#300Earlier quoted context omitted.
UW student - see the "Tampering and Abuse" section of ( https://registrar.washington.edu/registration/policies-proce... ) which has been around for much longer and is well communicated with students.
Yes, I saw that linked in the top comment. What isn't clear is how this site actually violated that policy, if there was no course slot trading actually occurring. You could describe it as an attempt , but in this situation, the student asked for permission from the school before doing something that would violate their policies. To use an analogy, if I sneak notes into an exam, that is likely academic misconduct. Ho…
He might have violated the following by testing alone:
> The use of robots and other automated tools to submit registration requests is expressly forbidden.
Some sort of testing will likely have happened, in which case an automated tool has been used. Even if only by TFA himself.
Also note:
> Because use of scripts, robots, or other automated queries can adversely impact University network and computing resources and interferes with equal access to registration, such automated querying of registration-related resources is expressly forbidden. Violators may have their access to University network and computing resources terminated and may be subject to action by the University under applicable law, regulation, or policy, including but not limited to, discipline under any applicable University conduct code.
The whole purpose of the project is to violate this clause. I agree that if no testing had happened, no sanctions should apply because the clause above doesn't say anything about attempts of use being sanctioned.