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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

#351

Post by numeri »

cbozeman wrote: post #331
joecool1029 wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 of…

The First Amendement limits what the US Congress/government can do, not what a private person can do.

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

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

#352

Post by croemer »

ec109685 wrote: post #349
croemer wrote: post #291

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...

The followup is a bold claim with no receipts. He should share the uni's letter otherwise I won't believe it.

What might have happened is that UW offered that he could keep the website up if he changed the project in such a way a way that the university is happy with it.

We don't know how much escalation has happened already, maybe he gave grounds for UW to not give him the account back because he has indicated he wouldn't back down and try to find a way to get his project to work nonetheless.

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

#353

Post by donalhunt »

loeg wrote: post #92

UW registration weren't really open to criticism or improvement ca. 2009, either. Extremely hostile to student projects that would in any way interact with the registration system.

Having been on the IT side of student registration, it's a major undertaking for the teams involved with thousands of students to be processed in a fairly short window. Downtime of any type during the registration period has a major impact so I'm not surprised that a university is being cautious with a 3rd party system connecting and potentially causing performance or downtime issues.

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

#354

Post by thih9 »

emacsen wrote: post #288
colanderman wrote: post #266

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

A +1 to everyone else who has said get a lawyer. I'll add another angle: financial. You have invested years of time and presumably thousands of dollars into your schooling. Their threat that they will not allow you to graduate unless you give them unpaid labor without a clear boundary condition is a threat. While I haven't seen the correspondence, from what you said it appears they're doing the moral equivalent of on…

Agreed.

To add to that: it is understandable to expect and hope for the other party to behave rationally. But there is a power imbalance that the other party is exploiting and for all we know intends to continue.

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

#355

Post by jcrites »

anigbrowl wrote: post #330
rafram wrote: post #162

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's harsh, but that's not what defamation means at all.

Assuming his narrative is factual they are accusing him of a violation he did not commit and he is now being threatened with expulsion as a result.

True, but accusing him of a violation privately, to him, is not defamation. Accusing him publicly is still probably not defamation. Whether he violated certain terms of service is something that would ultimately need to be decided by a court, so them believing he did so isn't defamation even if they're wrong.

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

#356

Post by uwthrowaway »

jjmarr wrote: post #142
uwthrowaway wrote: post #70

Earlier 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…

I'd personally describe it as an attempt for two reasons, although reasonable minds can differ:

1. They made substantial progress towards a working tool with available code, before requesting permission from the school. That request was to enable parts of the site, not requesting permission to develop/release it publicly.

2. It is pretty clear to students that you aren't allowed to mess with any of the registration systems/process (e.g. trading/holding classes). Your analogy has a very reasonable question (are notesheets allowed) vs a policy which is made very clear.

A different analogy is creating a hidden device to cheat on exams, then asking the professor for the exam room's wifi password as to enable it it in the future. While the situation is not as clear-cut as the analogy, I hope it helps show my perspective.

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

#357

Post by croemer »

ec109685 wrote: post #349
croemer wrote: post #291

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...

Note that in the LinkedIn post he exclusively talks in first person: I developed the project etc.

In fact if you go on GitHub, their project presentation lists a 6 people team: https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/117dGuEK98-TwAPGUBijf.... He was on the backend team, but still mentions angular in the LinkedIn post.

Did the others not do anything? Or why is he not giving them credit in the LinkedIn post?

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

#358

Post by Bengalilol »

> 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

That's hardly readable, how could they act like that? I am sad to say it but you need the help of a lawyer and the most backup you'll get the better. The way they presented the case will never get solved in a happy manner. Do not let them get the code and the IP. Keep on!

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

#359

Post by withinboredom »

brailsafe wrote: post #297
eykanal wrote: post #140

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 a…

> If there's a way that almost any institution or person that you're transacting with in good faith [...] can get away with fucking you over, they might. Not always, but expect it.

This. Always protect yourself, even when operating in good faith. You may only interact with someone professionally, but you never know what kind of person you are really working with. Sometimes people may seem nice, but are pure evil.

In this particular case, it is likely the people in charge are completely unaware of the people doing the blackmailing. This may even be criminal, so it might be worth just talking to the police.

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

#360

Post by StefanBatory »

agluszak wrote: post #65

Interesting. 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...

Isn't USOS like nightmare of a system? I've heard of stories that people had to graduate after time, because they failed a subject at first year (!) and they had no chance to sign up for the course in the following years at USOS because someone was always faster.

I'm happy my uni in Poland didn't use it :P

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