491–500 of 737 posts
FERPA was probably a big factor in UW’s initial response to ask that the site be taken down. Institutions are all about CYA now.
The bit about blackmail seems a bit far fetched. I’d like to see the correspondence between UW and this individual. The entire story is certainly plausible but as other have pointed out, there are a number of inconsistencies.
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. 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…
Reminds me of the time my university made headlines!...for attempting to regulate wifi. https://m.slashdot.org/story/49515
I have seen the name pop up before, but I have never actually visited slashdot before. I think it was popular a bit before my time. This link made me heavily reconsider how much "worse" I thought internet discourse had gotten in the past 10 years. It looks like way back in 2004, it was still a bunch of people who didn't read the article before commenting arguing past each other to shout into the void the loudest. I g…
But, yeah, lots of people skipping straight to comment too.
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> 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…
A lawyer is NOT the right next step. As soon as you engage a lawyer the school will switch from treating this as a student policy matter (which will be resolved in a timeline of days) to a legal matter (which will only be resolved in a timeline of years). The timeline question is of no concern to the courts or the school but makes a huge difference to you. It does seem like you need someone on your side. A list of pe…
The same goes for publicizing this further. The student newspaper is probably okay, but keep talking to other media in the room as a bargaining chip. Bad press may well force some administrator's hand.
To be sure, a chat with a lawyer may be helpful to get a sense of the universe of possible outcomes pursuing extramural action, but don't let anbyody send any lawyerly letters yet.
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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.
The "trading" is all out of band, the system only sees one person drop their registration and another person fill the slot. When someone drops a class, the opening becomes available immediately, so you coordinate a time well after the registration rush has died down for one person to click "drop" and the other to refresh the page and click "register". At least that's how it worked when I did it 20 years ago. It was r…
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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…
> 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? That was my initial thought too. The upside is that that "someone" likely has a boss who called them out - so there may well be levels of the hierarchy that won't lose face by backing out of the exclusion decision. The challenge is to get their attention.
The registrar's office are the wrong people to appeal to. The deans office can fix this, but they may only move if it makes the University look bad. That's where the news and media can help, but this guy likely needs help to make that happen effectively.
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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.
You do have to be signed typically to actually make changes of course, I imagine this tool would have to have your netid login… (yikes)
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> 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…
An attorney kept me from making some very expensive (honest) mistakes and payed for himself many times over. Don't gamble with your future.
It is wild to me that the bulk of responses here seem to take how this is being described by the poster at face value. As well as the question of interfering with registration, he has also gone about this in a way that causes reputational damage (& UW have probably caused their own, but that's not necessarily relevant here), which I cant imagine they'll take that kindly either. But I work in a public university in th…