Yes yes, we’ve all seen “Risky Business”…
Perhaps this will cause the university to print an incredibly clear and detailed set of rules concerning the use of their servers by students?
Her Dean is being a narrowminded snarky person. Not to be overly coarse, but does this Dean truly think for a second that not one of her students enrolled has ever done something illegal to make money to get through her college?
Sounds like a nitwit who is not at all in touch with reality. I respect her moral codes as being hers. Do all students who enroll understant explicitly that when they enroll, they are accepting this person’s moral code and agreeing to live within the strictures imposed by that code while in college? Do they each sign a document agreeing to such?
If not, then Ms. Dean needs to think long and hard before inviting a whale of a lawsuit. The kid stole bandwidth? Fine. Cut her off. But to deny her a higher education that she was accepted into? My opinion is that that’s incredibly perverse.
IMHO, the dean should tread carefully, very carefully. In today’s society, the girl just may have a lawsuit against the college, and/or the dean. Even if she doesn’t really have a case, she could cause the college and/or dean to wrack up quite a bit in legal fees.
If the school doesn’t allow hosting of a web site for commercial purposes (and it shouldn’t!) then obviously the web site has to be removed.
The punishmet for the pupil? I would say forbid her to use the school servers for a period of time. And that would be my most harshest penalty for her.
I think it’s ridiculous, even for a private school to be telling their pupils what they can or cannot do OUTSIDE the class room.
If she decides to spend the dough on a new web site hosted by a commercial company the Dean should have ZERO to say about it, period.
Sorry , but to me thats what she should have done in the first place, after the site started to make money for her. I could understand if this was the early-mid nineties , but todays world , most places have a published internet usage policy , she dogged it ,and got burned. Why the dean goes on a morality kick , is the strange part. But anywhere else , she would have been burned on acceptable use policy.
[ul]
[li]Girl was caught running a porn website on personal college space.[/li][li]Girl was using this porn site to finance her college education.[/li][li]The site had no actual content, just links to other sites.[/li][li]I’m guessing that while this is a violation of the college’s computer use policy, the Dean is trying use this as an excuse to expel the student for immorality.[/li][/ul]
In my opinion, she hasn’t done much to deserve an expulsion. She used college webspace for personal gain. She couldn’t have wasted too much bandwidth on a links page. So, worst case, she moves the site somewhere else, and has her net privileges suspended.
I’m one inclined to believe that the Dean’s “morality rule”, arbitrarily enforced as it seems to be, is grounds for a lawsuit if it was applied to this girl without some other reason (though IANAL) – unless she signed a contract that stipulated moral behavior as per the dean’s guidelines. I’d suggest that this girl get herself a lawyer, and look over every slip of paper from the college she’s signed and all the rules she’s been expected to follow.
I think the girl should be commended. She’s tried to put herself through college doing something that, while not particularly kosher as far as the rules are concerned, is still honorable. If the Dean is so concerned about the morality of her students that she is willing to expel a bright person who wants to learn and is willing to do what is necessary to continue her education, then she has no business being in charge of an institution of higher learning.
I suppose if the Dean disapproves of any of the student’s other activities she will find a way to have her disenfranchised before the election - people like her don’t deserve to vote, let alone pay for an education.
She should have used a commercial service to host her page. Clearly she was wrong to use the school’s servers. So she Is in violation of that policy, but that is not a serious enough offense to be expelled IMHO.
As you (and I) pointed out, suspension of server proviliges would be appropriate punishment.
Also, as I mentioned, if she NOW chooses to go and create a new page on a commercial server that’s her buisness, not the Dean’s.
When a student is accepted to the college, they must sign an honor code. The honor code states among other things that “…students must not break any of the college ordinances…including the prescribed usage of college servers…”
This is what the dean will stand on to get the students server privileges revoked for a time. There will be no law suit I am sure, the dean may have her snarky beliefs but she would not bring them into a legal proceeding. She has plenty of grounds to revoke server privileges, but I doubt she’ll go any further than that. We’ll see today, there is a meeting with the student judiciary committee (jury of your peers type of group) the dean and the student. That meeting is at 10am…
If commercial use of the servers is prohibited, she should get some sort of punishment for that. Explusion? I don’t think so, unless there are other factors at work. (If this is a first offense, probably not…if one of the links hosted child porn, probably).
If commercial use of the servers is prohibited, the IT staff should go through all sites making sure that none of them are being used by students for any commercial use. It isn’t moral to push your morality on someone else (like that paradox?) - and inconsistant application of the policy to only what the Dean finds distastful is not fair…I have a loathing for Longaberger baskets, can I (if I were Dean) shut down the student selling Longaberger, but leave up a site on which you pay to register for a SF con?
The policy probably needs to be reviewed, if it hasn’t been in the past several years. Commercial transactions through the server are a fact of college student life now (buying stuff on Amazon, selling stuff on eBay). But hosted by the server is another issue. Also, I’d extend the policy further. Its probably not too difficult for her to host the site on IIS on a workstation in her dormroom - using the universities bandwidth. It isn’t just the server that incurs cost to the school. Commercial sites should not be allowed on the Universities network.
Actually, from what I can tell, the gay population at this college is doing quite well. I do believe gay kissing day is coming up soon;)
Seriously, this dean is not expressing anything unexpected by faculty who know her. The student in question has only been here a year and a half, she is soon to find out the truth first hand of this dean. Sad as it may be, this dean does quite a lot for this college, she has been here more than 25 years and is likely to be here several more.
Using the school network was probably not wise, considering it sounds like she certainly could have afforded to outsource it.
However, the fact that the “porn” factor is being played, sucks (parden the pun).
Who knows what the parents of other students are doing to pay for their education?
What if she had been a prostitute and saved up her money and then quit to go to college?
You seriously think there are not at least a few kids in that school buying their textbooks with money made by selling pot?
Sounds to me like your dean has too much time on her hands to be worrying about the source of her salary income.
Geez…it could have been worse. She could have earned the money by writing and selling the screenplay of “Gigli”.
