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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

#401

Post by bigbacaloa »

impendia wrote: post #41
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…

I'm a university professor, and this is batshit crazy. Who ? As in not "they" or "the university", but who within the university? Can you tell where the directive is coming from? If this comes from, say, the Provost's Office then this probably can't be handled internally. (The position of Provost is the #2 position at a university, and the provost usually runs the show while the President or Chancellor goes schmoozin…

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

#402

Post by _3u10 »

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…

Withholding your ability to attend school so that you can labor for another free of charge is more generally known as human trafficking.

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

#403

Post by bigbacaloa »

OtomotO wrote: post #169
ericmcer wrote: post #62

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Are those numbers a sum of the total benefits or something? It seems insane that a campus security guard is making 170k.

It seems insane that you need campus security guards at all oO

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

#404

Post by charlieyu1 »

isotypic wrote: post #149
charlieyu1 wrote: post #132

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The downside is that you may be unable to sell it and actually have to take a course that you don’t want

You can just drop the course - pretty much every university (in the United States, at least) allows students to drop courses one or two weeks into the semester without any record (on say, a transcript). Otherwise students cannot possibly plan their semesters, since courses may not make material available until after the semester actually starts. So if you are planning to sell the slots and it does not work out, you j…

And the slot will be reallocated.

I won’t say no harm but you have to be pretty desperate to try to pull this off

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

#405

Post by croemer »

blitzar wrote: post #381
croemer wrote: post #369

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm not sure whether I can trust the story as he presents it. The fact that he might be out for attention is a reason to have doubts, because he might have made the case look more extreme than it is so it trends better. There are a couple of other question marks: - Says he'll graduate this year, but he's only started at UW 1.5y ago, his project team mates also started 1.5y ago, so the course does not seem to be super…

It must have been a survey course. Frankly, I found the course rather elementary.

What's a survey course? It turns out that at least another team in the same course had the exact same app idea: https://www.sammybharadwaj.com/huskyswap - even same name. Sounds like this idea was either given by the instructor or the groups cooperated on choosing it.

Hence the idea of swapping must not have been the problem here, otherwise surely the instructor should be more in trouble than OP, and this other website shouldn't still be up.

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

#406

Post by lightedman »

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…

"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."

Sue the ever living hell out of them. They are forcing you to work for them unpaid. Call multiple labor boards and drag them into UW immediately.

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

#407

Post by rcfox »

Oh hey, I got in trouble at my university for trying to make a tool for students too. This was ~15 years ago now...

In my case, they accused me of copyright infringement and trying to destroy the co-op program. I made the case that while I was reproducing some data from the university's website, none of it had creative value and therefore wasn't protected by copyright. (I drew a parallel to an actual court case about reproducing phone book listings.)

I also reached out to some faculty that I was close to for some character references to show that I didn't have malicious intent.

Ultimately, I wasn't expelled or anything too bad. I was required to take a business ethics course, which I actually ended up enjoying.

Good luck!

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

#408

Post by xyst »

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 an awful PR situation for UW. Whoever thought they could hold a students ability to graduate hostage in exchange for _free_/slave labor is fucking insane. The people behind that decision need to be publicly named and subsequently fired.

In addition to raising hell on the public front. I would be consulting with attorneys to discuss what can be done in court to compel the UW to do the right thing.

Don’t be naive and think uni leadership will “make it right in the end”.

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

#409

Post by prophesi »

croemer wrote: post #367
craftman210 wrote: post #365

Earlier quoted context omitted.

If you look at the commit history and contributors, it's mostly him.

I'd take commit numbers with a grain of salt. Also, I wouldn't call half the commits _mostly_ at all: https://github.com/JDKaim/HuskySwap/graphs/contributors?from... By that metric, he did half the work. But it still means he completely disregards the other half.

56 commits, +273,244, -7,270 LOC

vs

46 commits, +478, -94 LOC

I think it's safe to say it was mostly him.

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

#410

Post by _yb2s »

This does not add up- this is your last term but you’ve only been there a year and a half? The university, who presumably has a professional engineering team making these systems is trying to blackmail an undergrad to reproduce something for free that they also wanted shut down? And you’re marketing this on linkedin in the context of asking for job offers?
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