Interesting story in the New York Times today about a handful of students at Baruch College who created a computer script to repeatedly check availability for a much-in-demand course they wanted to register for. Here’s some questions to respond to:
- Is it fair to punish the students if the college makes it so hard to get into certain courses that some will engage in technology tricks to work around the system?
- If you think they should be punished, what is a reasonable punishment? How would punishment for that differ for a student who hacked into the email system and accessed people’s email accounts?
Kaminer, Ariel. “Tech-Savvy Baruch College Students Seek an Edge in Registration, and Find Trouble.” New York Times 5 Feb. 2013: A19(L). Academic OneFile. Web. 5 Feb. 2013.
I received an email (more like an email blast) from Dr. Ben Corpus, the Dean of Students of Baruch College, explaining about this matter and a couple of hours later read the article after Professor put it up on blog.
This was an extremely interesting read and after finishing the article, ended up with mixed feelings towards the students involved in the matter- a bit sympathetic, yet annoyed at their machiavellian tactics to get ahead.
The only thing the students did was, in short, devise a program that allowed them to register ahead of everyone. But to achieve such an advantage, they tampered with the CUNY system and that according to Dr. Corpus seem to have been an offense. For more info, I have added the CUNY Computer User Policy that every student have to agree to before joining Baruch.
All in all, I think it was not fair that the students used such tactics to try to get ahead of everyone, but again at the same time, they had no malicious intentions, so I am not sure if they should be punished or not. However, if they did hack into the email system, then I think that is a very serious offense and they should be punished accordingly.
CUNY Computer User Policy: http://www.baruch.cuny.edu/bctc/student/CUNYsComputerUserPolicy.htm