A student (not one of mine) was recently ‘caught’ hosting and profiting from a porn site. Upon further review she disclosed to her Dean that it was paying for much of her college. Tho not breaking any college rule, she was breaking a ‘morality’ rule the Dean likes to enforce from time to time. She (the Dean) is quite conservative and is not someone to be trifled with. This being said, I am at odds with this dilema: From what I know, the site was not a main site, but one of containing links to other sites. There were no photo’s on it of the student or of any students at this school. Had that been the case, I’d have to side with the Dean. I’m not familiar with how she was getting paid, but our school costs 35K a year to attend. If she is paying for it with the site she mustbe doing pretty well. As for her character, she’s a very bright, young woman, 10th in her class and a very talented writer.
So what say you? I am not sure yet if the word expulsion has been mentioned, or if some sort of recourse has been determined yet, however, I know the Dean is a tuff woman when it comes to issues of morality…What does everyone else think?
p.s. I’m glad I am not on the committee looking into this.
Yea. Absolutely.
I can’t imagine a reason why this would be unacceptable. College is damned expensive. Lots of women fund their education by stripping, as it pays better than any office job and the hours allow you to go to school during the day. Running a porn site seems to share all these benefits.
If Ms Dean doesn’t approve of porn, that’s fine, but I can’t see a justification for making the student comply to her morals. The student should get extra credit for her entreprenurial spirit!
I’m with cowgirl here, what right does the dean have to impose her standard of morals on a student?
To my mind, even she HAD a full blown porn site with pictures of herself there should be no discussion about it, period (as long as the site was legal, and not being hosted on campus servers, of course).
What on earth makes you think the Dean should have a say in this?
I don’t see how that makes any difference at all. As long as it’s not hosted on the University’s servers, it’s none of their damn business how she legally makes her money.
As long as the student is not breaking the law, she should be allowed to make her money any way she can.
What will happen if she is expelled?
I bet she will just be in the porn business for a very long time.
What will happen if she stays in school?
She’ll probably drop the porn site when she gets a ‘real’ job. Obviously she wants to be more than a porn site webmaster or she wouldn’t even be in school.
Well, she’s the dean. Assuming this is a private school (highly likely given the pricetag of $35K) then she can impose pretty much whatever moral standards she wants.
That said, I think she should lighten up and let the woman go to class.
Another Yea. As long as it’s not on the school’s servers, it’s a legal trade and the money is being put to a lawful use that in no way sape or form hurts the school.
However… friends on the board… if this is a private institution, we run into the wee little detail that private entities can impose all sorts of rules on those who wish to associate with them, as long as it does not impinge on a legally protected category (e.g. sex, race, religion).
BUT, THAT in turn would lead us to run into whether the student, when applying or enrolling, submitted to any sort of binding “morals clause” – The OP says:
WHOSE ‘morality rule’, if it’s not the college’s? The Dean’s personal rule? I’m confused. Is not the Dean’s job s to enforce the college’s duly-approved policies and established rules? If depending on her moral/political orientation she can just pull out of her hat a ruling of “I feel you’re immoral, get outta here”, she’s one huge lawsuit waiting to happen, if one day she runs into a student whose family has money of their own for lawyers…
Friedo fair enough, I assumed (probably incorrectly) that this was a public college.
The question still remains: Which rule was being broken? Was it a school rule, or the Dean’s fine sensebilitites acting up?
Dammit, why didn’t I think of doing that? 
I’m a yea, I guess. I’m guessing the college’s ‘morality rules’ are vague to the extreme, and she’ll win her case somehow or other.
Wouldn’t it be great if she was studying something like Internet Commerce?
I should be a little more clear here. Yes, the school is a Private Liberal Arts College - :eek: wait right there…liberal arts??? - yes, liberal arts…For the most part we are a very open faculty and staff. This particular Dean is known to not be very Liberal when it comes to certain issues, mainly sex and drugs…The issue at hand falls under the ‘sex’ part of her thought process.
Unfortunately, the problem is the student was using College servers for the sight. The server room happens to be attached to her dorm, I am not sure of the logistics of the whole situation i.e. how she was using the college servers but I know that is how she was caught.
However, she was still not breaking any rules, because we have many students here using our servers for their personnal websites. However, non are of the risky nature as this one.
When brought to the attention of this Dean, the dean was flabbergasted not only because the perpetrator was female, but that the perp was doing this since beginning of last semester.
I am not a computer guru in any form, so I am not sure how she went undetected…Does anyone know how she could have stayed under the radar? I do not believe students have to have a prof. look at a website before it is hosted, but they do have to get the signature from our IT dept head.
I am not close to that department so it’s protocols are slightly foreign to me.
The problem here is the dean does not want the site to be tied in any way to our institution. This would be bad, and certainly not tolerated. In the end I would think if the young woman can find other means to host the site it will be allowed, but it will stop on the colleges servers.
Someone I know studying Computer Science said that he wants to work for a porn site for a while. Not because he’s interested in the pornography industry or anything like that, but because they run very high volume and load sites on the lousiest equipment possible and manage to be as solid as a rock. Apparently, he wants to find out just how the heck they do that.
Do any other students run “for profit” sites on the school’s servers? Is this allowed? If yes, then I don’t see the issue. If no, then it would seem sort of like stealing, in a sort of way. Is there any precedence for students running businesses from their dorm rooms?
Again this is not my forte, so in response to
IIRC, the site must be legal… I do not know if there is a clause stating that the site can not be porn related.
Exactly.
“Personal use” website is not the same as “commercial use” website.
Most institutions of that sort prohibit commercial uses of their servers (or charge a higher price for that use). It seems to me this is more of an issue of violating the TOS then a morals issue.
Here we have rules which explicity state we cannot host any pornography images on the Universities servers, or use our university email accounts to send these kind of images.
And I’m sure we can’t run commercial sites from the Uni servers.
I would have thought both of these issues would be covered by the licence agreement to use the College network. in which case of course the Dean has every right to discipline the student.
This is the main issue. First how did she do it…then what should the punnishment be for making money from a porn site…whilst using the colleges servers.
To be honest, had it been any other dean here she probably would have got a slap on the wrist. However, this has never happened here to my knowledge, so that will count against her.
Using the school servers for this is wrong. But, in general, paying for college by running a porn site should not only be allowed, it should be encouraged! 
I work in the computer department of a major public university. It is forbidden to use your server space here for any commercial purpose. Additionally, we shut people down for using too much bandwidth. I would think running a successful porn site would hog huge amounts of the school’s bandwidth.
OK, if it’s the college’s server then she should take it down or take it elsewhere. But then the Dean should be able to make a case based not on the special “immorality” of the porn-link site, but on that even if “porn” is not explicitly forbidden, this use of the college’s resources violates the standard expectation of ethical use of the systems (that personal use must be strictly noncommercial). If it’s unethical for anyone to make money off the college’s server, then any sanctions on any violators must be uniform accross-the-board, not dependent on the Dean’s vision of “morality” (and much less on whether she finds it more flabbergasting that a female would be doing it!) or else you still have that suit-waiting-to-happen scenario.
As to the non-detection of the site, maybe the folks at IT are from the more “Liberal” segment of the population and were more willing to give a pass to a site with only links, and not actual content. As to how it was unnoticed it was revenue-making traffic… well, I can’t help with that.
Chalk up another Yea; as expensive as school is, if you’re not getting a big scholarship they should let you do whatever you do best to pay for it. One of the more feasible alternatives is loans; getting out of college with a $100,000+ gorilla on your back is not the way to do things. So unless you’re on a full ride, you gotta do what you gotta do.
On the other hand, using the school’s bandwidth for it? That’s probably a no-no. If the Dean wasn’t such a stickler for “morality”, such as it is, I could imagine working out some sort of situation where she could give some of her earnings in turn for use of their bandwidth? Sounds like a mutually beneficial situation, although I don’t how it would work out legally.
$.02