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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

#611

Post by kelloggm »

Symbiote wrote: post #375
glaugh wrote: post #243

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know very little about lawyering, but I could imagine a UW-alum or Seattle-area lawyer advising pro bono bc of generosity or good publicity on a very newsworthy case Anyone on here friends with a UW-alum or Seattle-area lawyer who might be interested but doesn’t read HN?

Do American university students belong to unions? It's very common in the UK. The most visible part of the unions is running social activities, often bars and events, but they can also provide legal advice to their members.

Even if this student isn't a member, the local graduate student union (https://www.uaw4121.org/) would probably be a useful ally. All TAs are in the bargaining unit, and UW CSE has _a lot_ of undergrad TAs, so I wouldn't even be surprised if this student is a present (or former) member.

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

#612

Post by lolinder »

encoderer wrote: post #610
lolinder wrote: post #578

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's worth noting that the dad also gave his son a job at his company while the kid was still in high school. There's nothing inherently wrong with that, but it does show that the father is heavily invested in this kid and willing to act affirmatively to give him a leg up, which means I personally would not count this as additional testimony backing up the story. The dad's testimony doesn't make it less likely to be…

You’re being downvoted for poor critical thinking in this case, which led you to write a comment that doesn’t add to the conversation. Of course the father is “heavily invested” in his son. That comes from decades of raising him, diapers, dinners, driving and him around, and probably also sharing 50% of his genes.

It's less a lack of critical thinking and more an overabundance of cautious wording to avoid unnecessary offense.

I'm suggesting that this father may have engaged in nepotism once before, which makes me question his integrity. Not every father does that, so it's more relevant than just "of course, it's the dad".

I phrased it cautiously because I don't know the full story, but the pieces are there and I think it's worth pointing them out.

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

#613

Post by mrmanner »

lolinder wrote: post #603
alexjplant wrote: post #601

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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. I haven't looked to see what position the son has at his father's business or the nature of the business itself so I can't comment on specifics. I will say, however, that it isn't uncommon for parents to employ their kids under the table for below market wage commensurate wit…

It's also not uncommon for many parents to employ their kids over the table at exactly or above market rate and let the kid develop experience and get paid at the expense of the parent's other employees. This is legal in most cases, but that doesn't mean that every parent would do it—I personally would steer well clear of this kind of arrangement to avoid even the appearance of nepotism. With either type of arrangeme…

> at the expense of the parent's other employees

rather at the expense of the business owners, which may well be the parent themselves? (ok fine the other employees could have equity in the business, but other than that)

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

#614

Post by lolinder »

mrmanner wrote: post #613
lolinder wrote: post #603

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's also not uncommon for many parents to employ their kids over the table at exactly or above market rate and let the kid develop experience and get paid at the expense of the parent's other employees. This is legal in most cases, but that doesn't mean that every parent would do it—I personally would steer well clear of this kind of arrangement to avoid even the appearance of nepotism. With either type of arrangeme…

> at the expense of the parent's other employees rather at the expense of the business owners, which may well be the parent themselves? (ok fine the other employees could have equity in the business, but other than that)

I've been at companies where the owner prioritized their family over the business and the other employees. It's a sucky place to work.

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

#616

Post by btilly »

Jcampuzano2 wrote: post #572
croemer wrote: post #556

His (presumed) dad commented this on LinkedIn: > I have seen all the emails now and it's as bad as described. I thought there might be some hyperbole but the "University Registrar and Chief Officer of Enrollment Information Services" is clearly saying "work with us to build this for free or you're not graduating". They even specify that he needs to set up the meeting "well before registration opens on February 13th f…

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…

Not weird at all if lawyers are involved.

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

#617

Post by mrmanner »

dekhn wrote: post #599
TeMPOraL wrote: post #565

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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.

well except they allegedly asked said allegedly inexperienced developer to develop the thing for them, for free

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

#618

Post by brailsafe »

autoexec wrote: post #538
withinboredom wrote: post #359

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> 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…

> 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. It's not even always a case of being evil. Large institutions/companies are full of polices and processes designed to protect the system at all costs and some nice people will turn their brain off and strictly follow those policies either because t…

Absolutely. It's my impression—after many mistakes—that one of the most important pieces of advice I could have given myself at a younger age, is that "your job is basically a function of what you're empowered to do and what you're clearly rewarded for, don't imagine it to be something it's not, don't pretend or act as though you have more influence than you do".

Your bank's website might have shit accessibility and usability, but it's not because the developers suck, it's because they aren't paid to do more than the minimum that they're paid for, and it's stupid for them to incur that cost or scope risk just because they're altruistic. If they spent 5 hours on a Wednesday optimizing a thing for screen readers, but there's literally no measurable reason to do so, that's a mark against them if there's anything else to do that does.

The same pattern is true across other jobs. It's not the admin's job to have empathy or to decide whether a policy should exist, it's there job to enforce arbitrary policies. It's also not the job of a University to educate people, that's now a University typically makes money, it's only even tenuously their job to get people between having no measure of knowledge, and having a measure of knowledge, but not necessarily to have any specific impact on that.

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

#619

Post by uwthrowaway »

zifpanachr23 wrote: post #434
fullofbees wrote: post #433

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…

Probably pent up rage w.r.t. beurocracy we've all experienced in college? I agree with you that it seems that there might be something missing from the story. The standard response and advice of talking to a lawyer I think is still good and stands regardless of how full or truthful the OPs account of the situation is. I don't personally think that most university staff in the US are out to get people in this way eith…

UW has had some pretty bad issues (e.g. systems lab abuse [1], early-entrance programs [2]). Another program I was in had serious issues such as overworking and threatening student eligibility, such that almost all the leadership involved left for other universities. That was never reported more loudly out of fear of retaliation and sheer exhaustion of the students. That being said, it is a large university with many different actors and most of my experiences here have been positive.

[1] https://www.dailyuw.com/news/uw-allen-school-confirms-invest...

[2] https://www.dailyuw.com/news/six-students-accuse-robinson-ce...

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

#620

Post by dcrazy »

numeri wrote: post #351
cbozeman wrote: post #331

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.

Please familiarize yourself with the various ways higher education comes under the umbrella of “state actor.”
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