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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

#591
post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until they post evidence, legal counsel comments on it, or its reported by a news agency its a bit moot. I personally would have gone full nuclear and posted all evidence to put pressure on the school already by now. If I'm already defacto expelled I'd have nothing to lose by putting this on blast. Its weird that he hasn't posted anything given the retaliation he is receiving, hence why its hard to take completely se…

Jeez, somebody not going immediately full mental meltdown fully public for reason X Y Z should be immediately dismissed. You have 0 info about him or his life, so it would be wiser to stop passing clueless judgements.

Looks like brainrot has reached HN too. "0 info about their life" is exactly the reason why one cannot be certain about their story - neither trust nor mistrust is warrented yet.

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

#592
post #233

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can definitely bang out all the major requirements in 2 years if you don't need any gen ed classes (e.g. community college or other transfer credits). ~18 class-quarters of requirements, 3 classes/quarter => 6 quarters. Possibly as short as 4-5 quarters if you can manage a higher courseload.

Wow, really? So you just pay for a year instead of 4 years? Why do people not do that more?

The critical part is getting all the non-exciting stuff done at community college. There’s a useless cultural construct we have that says that CC is for a lower tier of student. Obviously this is absolute poppycock, since paying $2000 a year for college vs $20,000 only proves that you don’t like pissing away money. It’s not like English 112 is taught by world-class professors at Stanford or UW. It’s taught by some random TA. But many types of people (even myself) felt pressure to “attend a 4-year school” right from the start.

The best argument for it actually is purely social — community colleges (for no real reason though) don’t have dorms, so the ‘commuter school’ experience can be socially isolating, whereas for outgoing types mixing with all your fellow freshman in a dorm can be very socially rewarding and help establish major friendships. I think they should add on-campus living to community college.

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

#593

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

I'm always curious in cases like these what the actual exercise of your "first amendment rights" was that the other person took offense to.

Made fun of a post-doc lab instructor that was under the lab director's purview.

I shit you not. He got upset that someone was - verbally - making fun of this guy. He was a goofy as fuck guy, so I see why 18-22 year olds would do that. I wouldn't because he was a good guy with a good heart, he just looked goofy, acted goofy, and plain old WAS goofy, but that's not enough for me to make fun of someone.

It is enough, actually, but I would never do it maliciously, and I would always do it to someone's face, and it would always... always be good-natured, not intentionally cruel.

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

#594
post #351

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

If your college or university accepts money from the government, in public spaces on that campus, like say... anywhere outdoors, for instance, out on the quad, where this happened, that is considered a protected area for speech.

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

#595
post #577

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Until they post evidence, legal counsel comments on it, or its reported by a news agency its a bit moot. I personally would have gone full nuclear and posted all evidence to put pressure on the school already by now. If I'm already defacto expelled I'd have nothing to lose by putting this on blast. Its weird that he hasn't posted anything given the retaliation he is receiving, hence why its hard to take completely se…

Jeez, somebody not going immediately full mental meltdown fully public for reason X Y Z should be immediately dismissed. You have 0 info about him or his life, so it would be wiser to stop passing clueless judgements.

OP wanted this scrutiny and is using it to advertise himself to employers. Any analysis, criticism, or doubt is what he asked for. He should "show receipts" (emails at least) if he wants people to take his word for it.

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

#596
post #239

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I am somewhat surprised issues of scripting and trading even exist in the registration system. Staggering enrollment times over a few days, with new waves every 20 minutes or so, mostly solves scripting issues since you are only competing with a fraction of the student body now. Giving courses waitlists once they are full, instead of allowing people to just directly register once a spot frees up, makes trading imposs…

So, for context, UW's registration system runs on, like, a single 1980s VAX.

The school I attended in 2010 had a system like this as well. Awful backend with a simple, but still awful, web interface to talk to it. There was rumor you could telnet in and use an actual text interface, but I never saw it.

The system was replaced a few years later with an Oracle PeopleSoft implementation. Everybody hated it more.

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

#597
post #522
post #483

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> If you can't get into a required course, it can delay your graduation a full year. That costs way more than a couple hundred dollars. Sure, but if you don't have "a couple of hundred dollars", you don't. It's a bit like saying "Why are people poor? Just put $1 million into a savings account, then you'll get enough to survive each month". Great for the ones who can, irrelevant for the ones who can't.

I think most students in America have loans. For me, and everyone I knew, there was a credit balance after the school got paid and that money was put into your bank account. Don't forget you have to buy books, etc., and they cost "a couple of hundred dollars" too. When I was an undergraduate I was definitely on a knife's edge, but I also often had cash in the bank because I got a big cash infusion annually. I just ha…

I myself was never given access to any funds or credit from student loans.

It would have been nice if I did though.

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

#598
post #580

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm pretty sure that the (presumed) father would be heavily invested in his kid, regardless of whether or not he gave him a job while he was in HS. Certainly we should look at someone else's (especially a relative's) corroboration of the story with some skepticism; ideally we could see the emails themselves. But really, OP should contact a lawyer ASAP.

Right, but I do think that the fact that he gave his son a job in high school makes his testimony even more unreliable than a typical parental relationship. Maybe the kid really is that good, but it's more likely that the dad was willing to sacrifice a bit of his company's time to support his son. That's not a decision that every father would make—not even every supportive father—so I think it's relevant here.

Someone else pointed out that the framework OP used in the project is the creation of his dad as well: https://github.com/SharpLogic/LightNap

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

#599
post #548

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Yeah, let me give some perspective here. There's somebody in the registrar's office whose job is to be responsible for the production process of registration. They are minimally staffed and given just enough resources to run that process. Likely at some point their leadership told them they had to make an API so that they could integrate with other systems. Due to poor funding and lack of skills, just doing that is a…

> They lack knowledge and context about how to build production systems that handle the load during the registration crush and also don't cause undue load on the backend API servers. That sounds like a cop-out. Sure, students may not know about all this, but they're also not building Google . Many people run businesses without caring about such things just fine. Most things don't require six nines of reliability and…

Yes, but as we know, the best way to make a project that is late/slow/unreliable even later, slower, and more unreliable is to add inexperienced devs to the project. Which is (from the perspective of the university) what they are trying to avoid.

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

#600

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Don't mention a lawyer casually. Just have the lawyer send a letter. Don't give them the option to call your bluff. People casually mention a lawyer so frequently it means nothing. Receiving a letter from an actual lawyer means everything.

Having a lawyer send a letter isn't an automatic win. Once you turn it into a legal threat you force them to escalate to their legal team. Reasonable lawyers would likely roll their eyes and talk the university back from this weird move, but you're not guaranteed reasonable lawyers on the other end. If they feel threatened they might start looking even deeper into into contracts you signed as a way to protect themsel…

> Once you turn it into a legal threat you force them to escalate to their legal team.

Assuming we have the relevant facts of the case, it seems like when UW's legal team gets involved, they will tell the relevant people in the university's leadership "wtf were you thinking, de-escalate immediately, and allow this kid to enroll in classes and graduate", and the problem will go away for OP.

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