Oh damn...someone's screwed!!!

So, most of you know I am in school right now and have been for way too long. Well, our grades from the last course we took haven't been posted yet and it's been over a month now. So the dean came in Monday to talk to everyone about it. Apparently there were quite a few people cheating on some of the in-class quizzes and possibly even on an exam.

Now cheating sucks, in any form I believe, but this is a bit different. This is grad school and it's a small school (class of 150). We had 2 exams for the course and our quiz points which were taken directly from the questions in the back of our book, so all you had to do to get them right was read the effin book and show up to class. It turns out that the quizzes added up were worth more than the 1st entire exam too.

So the dean is pissed, he's kicking some kids out of school. But he said that around 30-40% of the class was cheating in one form or another. Whether it was taking the quizzes from home while getting the answers from someone in class over a chat, text, whatever; or taking it from home without getting the answers and just hitting C,C,C for the answer. Not really sure what else they are looking for but I know they are looking at the ip addresses of people when they took the quizzes as well as going through aim or instant messenger chat logs that are stored on the school server!!!

This sucks for the idiots who really did cheat, and I know 5 of the ones who really did. B/c they will now be around 120k in debt with no way to pay it off unless they can get into another school. However, I'm a little bothered by the instant messenger conversation check...not b/c I was dishonest on my exams/quizzes, but b/c I do chat about things on there that I don't want other people reading sometimes. Say when I'm chatting with my wife and shes in a horny mood, lol...or chatting with someone about AS. I'd like to think that they will only look at the chat logs for the time periods when the quizzes were taken, but I'm not sure I trust every one of them to do that.

Anyhow, thought I'd rant about it a bit.

Do you use a laptop of yours or their school computer to chat on?

They gave us laptops when we started school, so they are ours but came from them and we had to pay and extra 2k for them. I figure that if they want to view my chat logs they will be able to and there's not much I can do about it now. I'm just trusting that they won't go snooping around when they shouldn't.

I'm getting a new comp next week from the next couple of years and I'm going to have a buddy set it up to where things can't be traced on it. He has done it with this one, but I'm sure if they wanted to get me they could...question is what reason would they have to do that? Honestly, I'm not worried about it, but I do feel bad for the couple of people who are now screwed

Where does the invasion of privacy end and begin is the question. The government has a hard copy of every email ever sent, or at least I have read that in many places. The internet was never generally intended for us but for the government so it would not shock me. I also think about things like cell phones. Have you ever considered their gps capabilities make us fully traceable all the time to the government. Now I read Obama has declared Gm to have a new CEO. Where do we stop all this. This country is a republic believe it or not and even the states rights are being removed. It seems like one aspect of privacy and personal choice disappears here every day. It really sounds like we are heading towards socialism to me. Just my two cents and rant all at once.

Spiderman said:

They gave us laptops when we started school, so they are ours but came from them and we had to pay and extra 2k for them. I figure that if they want to view my chat logs they will be able to and there's not much I can do about it now. I'm just trusting that they won't go snooping around when they shouldn't.

I'm getting a new comp next week from the next couple of years and I'm going to have a buddy set it up to where things can't be traced on it. He has done it with this one, but I'm sure if they wanted to get me they could...question is what reason would they have to do that? Honestly, I'm not worried about it, but I do feel bad for the couple of people who are now screwed

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If the computer is your property, i.e., you paid for it, they have no legal right to look at it, even if you use their network to connect to the Internet. Anything that is on school owned computers they can look at. They might say you can't connect via their network unless you let them look, but you can always find another way to get on to the Internet if you need to.

i wouldn't survive in an environment like that...

saudades said:

If the computer is your property, i.e., you paid for it, they have no legal right to look at it, even if you use their network to connect to the Internet. Anything that is on school owned computers they can look at. They might say you can't connect via their network unless you let them look, but you can always find another way to get on to the Internet if you need to.

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i agree with this thats why i asked whos it was. I would tell them to fuck off. If its on your computer they have no right to look at it. If its a problem then they should change the rules IE: no computers phones etc. during exams. Hell our school doesnt even allow hats during exams because people write answers on the bill. Also phones out or computer during test = auto zero and if they can prove you were cheating expulsion.

Well, the the school got a new grant the year before I got here and they used that to purchase our computers. So technically they are owned by that grant money until we graduate and then we get them. So I believe that the comps are still the schools property. The class beneath me didn't have this luxury and ended up paying out of pocket for their computers...which I believe makes them the owners.

IDK - the whole thing is ridiculous in my opinion. I think they have a good idea who the cheaters are and if they had come across something in my instant message chats about my gear talk, etc...I would've already been in to see someone I'm sure. I suppose that they were just looking at chat sessions during the time frame of the in-class quizzes but I still don't trust them not to search again once they've done it. The first time you do something is always the hardest, so IDK. And I know some of the IT guys here so now that this has been opened to them I imagine they will easily figure out how to do it again.

The good news is that I get a new comp in 3 weeks and I will be setting that up to where they will not have a chance at reading anything on there.

On another topic that has to do with school...one of our profs got caught banging a student after hours in one of the labs last week. He was the dean of his department and apparently the preacher at his church, WTF. Rumors had been flying around about it for awhile so I asked a prof who is actually a good buddy of mine and he said that it was legit...security busted them after hours. What a moron!!!

It honestly wouldn't be that big of a deal if this wasn't a small community and a relatively small program. I like the irony of having him in class with the dean of the school and both of them talking to us about our ethics, then having this come out. LMAO - it doesn't help that I'm not a fan of the guy either. anyhow...

Thought I'd update this....

So the cheating issue is over and the students involved (30) got into almost 0 trouble at all. This is because many of them were at the top of the class in terms of gpa, which makes me wonder if they've been cheating the whole time...but I guess that doesn't matter much.

It terms of the prof boning my classmate....looks like he is in the clear. Apparently it's harder to fire him b/c he's the dean of his department and those are hard to come by. However, the prof that told me about the whole thing (one of my workout partners at the gym) got into some trouble of it. Apparently he mentioned what he had been told to the wrong person in the building, or someone overheard him talking to another person about this. And he was fired yesterday! He's honestly been looking for other jobs for a few months and I think the admin knew that. The guy banging the student went to the dean accusing him of talking about him and they decided to let him go. Which really sucks b/c he was only prof there who wasn't a complete dick. He made sure you knew what you were supposed to know but he also kept it real. His lectures were about 25 minutes long, which pissed people off, and his reasoning for it was "you guys have so much shit on your plates right now that you don't need me wasting your time with things you're not going to need to remember. So here are the things you should know and keep in your head and I'm not going to fill another 35 minutes with bullshit just to make admin happy."

Let me just say that I hate the fact that to get anywhere in this world you have to play the game! But I think it is the truth...and if you don't you are going to get screwed one way or the other.

Good to know you dont have to worry about them booting you, but for future ref if they make any kind of threats like that do a reformat and all your worries are gone. It erases your hard drive down to the operating system which you would have to reinstall, but its really easy. If you get worried about it again shoot me a message and ill help you do it.