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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

#331

Post by cbozeman »

joecool1029 wrote: post #325
GrantMoyer wrote: post #88

Earlier 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…

Unlike most of the other commenters I have personal experience fighting a college administration in court. It was a massive time waste and I came out losing a years of my academic career where they lost nothing (money is absolutely not a factor for a large university, nor is stalling court proceedings to waste your life). I'm not even allowed to elaborate deeply on what it was about, the settlement for putting it beh…

I didn't have it quite as bad as you, but I did go to war once with my alma mater regarding a particularly small lab director and part-time instructor who had a Napoleon complex going on. He was directly and obviously infringing on student's First Amendment rights, not to mention bullying the class as a whole and attempting to threaten people. Ironically, his heart was in the right place, but his execution was way off.

I was fortunate in that I went to college much later in life, after a career in the military, and as I'd had enough bullshit there, I made the conscious choice not to tolerate any out in the world.

Long story short, he and I butt heads. Then he wanted to take up to the Department head. For someone with a Ph.D., she definitely didn't think it through, just proving you can have a Ph.D., even in a STEM field, and not be too fucking bright... but... when it got to the Dean of Students, and the campus's VA liaison all sat down for a meeting with me, and I started pointing out that F.I.R.E. would have a field day with this, and would we really want a veteran-led incident on campus with a lab director that's flat out admitted in recorded interviews (I was attending college in a one-party recording state, so I had recordings of every one of these meetings) that he doesn't care about students' First Amendment rights??

That put everything into perspective really damn quick. I have never forgot that meeting because there, in that moment, we all looked at each other and everyone understood exactly what I was saying. The Dean of Students stood up and said, "Do you want to apologize to the department dean...?" and I just raised one eyebrow and he immediately shot back, "Right... we should probably all let this go." I nodded and said, "I think that'd be the best option for everyone involved, after you guys sit down with Lab Director and straighten him out."

I've done some things I'm not too particularly proud of in my life, but this was one time I really felt like I did the right thing.

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

#332

Post by Agingcoder »

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…

This is blackmail - it’s wrong. It’s fairly obvious you can’t trust them, at the very least ask a lawyer.

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

#333

Post by icameron »

seanmcdirmid wrote: post #310
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…

UW CSE alum (but graduated 1^H25 years ago). You should at least talk to a guidance counselor if you are close to graduating. They have a lot of incentive to get you graduated, and would probably just register you for your courses manually (because...you weren't officially expelled so there has to be a way). Anyways, the counselor will have options for you, and won't be constrained by whoever is running the registrat…

This is some sound advice. The student hasn’t actually been expelled, he’s just pissed off the registrar, by making an an app that says “HuskySwap is a platform designed for students at the University of Washington ("UW") to swap classes with one another. ” (against the rules) but not expelled.

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

#334

Post by jjluoma »

How does the course-swapping site work? Is there some part that requires users to enter their credentials (email, password) on a web site that is not operated by the university? Is there some part that saves an access token or a refresh token in other place than the web browser?

Is some OAuth2 authentication flow involved so that the university has registered the application and assigned a client id and return URI?

I think the university might have valid security concerns if the application somehow accesses student accounts without valid OAuth2 authorization flow (or equivalent).

Entering login credentials for university on a third-party site is probably forbidden by terms of service for the university site.

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

#335

Post by thorncorona »

buildbot wrote: post #282
hirvi74 wrote: post #213

Earlier quoted context omitted.

How were said student(s) even caught? I am assuming someone spoke too loudly or shared too much, but I'd be lying if I said I was not hoping for some kind of technical solution.

Not sure, but UW IT isn’t incapable of noticing repeated requests from the same IP or something, I assume most students are not setting up systems that go over residential proxies.

You typically need to be signed in in order to get all the course info.

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

#336

Post by at_a_remove »

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…

Do not have faith. Once they pick some dumb track, they will stick with it until they either lose legally or lose in the court of public opinion (donors). See also: Oberlin.

If this is a one-party state, record those calls!

Best thing to do is to lure them into overestepping themselves in writing, and the extortionate demand that you work for free is heading in that direction.

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

#337

Post by hattmall »

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…

You need to figure out who exactly you are dealing with and who is making these decisions and then find out who you need to be talking to in order to get what you need. The person putting you on the hold is probably a very low level person in the registrars office. Probably start with going to your professors if you have good relationships with them or if not figure out how to speak with someone who understands and has more authority. I don't think lawyers are going to do much for you.

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

#338

Post by imtringued »

croemer wrote: post #312
KPGv2 wrote: post #304

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> That would mean you'd just take 2 years instead of the normal 4? FWIW my wife was a fourth-year the start of her second year at uni because she'd tested out of a ton of basics or taken dual-credit courses in high school. I was a fourth-year the end of my second year. I AP'd my way out of 6 hours of English, 14 or so hours of Spanish, 8 hours of physics, 8 hours of calculus, and a hodgepodge of psych, sociology, etc…

Only saves time if you consider being in university a waste of time instead of an opportunity to be free to learn what you are interested in and surrounded by like-minded people.

University is definitely not a place where you are free to learn whatever you want, unless you already have all your credit points.

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

#339

Post by [deleted] »

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…

[deleted]

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

#340

Post by IshKebab »

simonbw wrote: post #91

I went to UW a decade ago, and back then it was pretty common knowledge that you don't fuck with software and the class registration system. Registering for classes was really competitive and they were really strict about making sure that no one had an edge over anyone else by being able to write code. There were plenty of rumors of people being expelled for using scripts to try to get the classes they wanted right w…

If they didn't want people trading registrations why not just... not allow them to trade reservations? I can't trade plane tickets, and that isn't because of some implied threat.
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