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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

#341

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why is trading considered bad? It is solving some problems for both students and administrators. In my old days we did the same, only by finding someone who want to swap manually

It opens up for abuse by offering to sell a spot.

If a resource is so scarce that its real value is higher than the official one, the producer will have to either increase production, or accept that black markets will appear.

Why can't UW increase the number of classes?

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

#342

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…

That's a mafia with extra steps

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

#343
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…

it's almost like universities are about controlling an artificial limited access to knowledge than about knowledge uh.

It's funny how a perfectly organized crime is not crime at all

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

#344

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…

RIP Aaron Swartz

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

#345

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If you have all the credits done within 2 years you can spend the other 2 years learning whatever you want :)

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

#346
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…

>Unless, that is, I agree to work on a comparable solution for the university focused on solving the underlying problem I was building HuskySwap for. They would presumably own the IP and were clear that I wouldn’t be compensated. But it was implied that they would then remove the hold, allowing me to graduate.

I am altering the deal, pray I do not alter it any further.

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

#347
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 am not planning to get a lawyer involved as I have faith that UW leadership will make it right in the end.

don't be daft. they are already blackmailing you for free labour.

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

#348
post #262

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Their response on face value doesn't make sense. But if I had to guess, you inadvertently made someone in the registrar's office look bad. They probably had to answer to "why didn't you think of this?" If that is the case then it makes a lot more sense and is retaliatory behavior. You can't undo their insecurity and loss of face. Therefore you should not expect a reasonable response. Act accordingly. Educate yourself…

Seconding this. It's entirely likely the registrar is this petty and boneheaded. It's less likely that their boss is though, this is a really bad look for the university. Personally I would find a way to contact the president of the university (possibly through university PR, who also care about public image) and simply state, "The registrar is asking me for quid pro quo, that I develop software for them in exchange…

> reneg on your half of the "deal".

deny, delay, defect.

and don't sign anything!!

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

#349

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?

Yes, with a completely clickbait intro (given he took the site down after the university warned him, which he said later in his post).

To be fair he follows up the first post saying that the university is holding his future registration hostage unless he builds them a similar website:https://www.linkedin.com/posts/jdkaim_github-jdkaimhuskyswap...

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