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Bills to Restrict Campus Internet Access
Slackrat writes "This article in the Arizona Daily Wildcat details the efforts of Rep. Jean McGrath, R-Glendale, to restrict dormitory visitation, require the installation of Internet filters, and allow students to to use campus Internet connections only for a "specific educational purpose" on all Arizona university campuses. And you thought banning Napster was rough." It goes beyond Internet access; opposite-sex dormroom visitation is on the block, too.
I have one question: Exactly what are students with high speed connections supposed to use their bandwidth for now?
Network Security: It always comes down to a big guy with a gun.
Because if she keeps pushing on this one, there is NO WAY she'll get re-elected.
What an unbelievably LAME concept.
This is not for the legistators to decide. This is a matter of individual University policy. It sounds to me like some overly moralistic legislator is attempting to regulate something that should be self-regulated.
I don't like it when U regulators make these rules either, but at least then you can go to another college in the same area. This regulation is effectively trying to take this option away.
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
McGrath said yesterday she has decided to remove another provision in the bill that would have required residence hall administrators to conduct random monthly inspections of all
residents' rooms for prohibited items.
That was nice of her 8-).
Wow, this is just what will be needed to ensure that our graduating college students are well-prepared for taking direction from "superior" individuals/corporations/governments rather than being able to think for themselves. What is this, 8th grade? 9th grade? *When* is this? 1955? 1957? INTERNET FILTERS?? I thought we were finally getting past this stuff. Guess not.
Next thing you know they will require using Microsoft on your dorm computers! Dammit. Just leave us alone! They are running out of people killing each other so now they have to nitpick ever fscking thing. Maybe if more people started killing each other they'd remember that downloading mp3s is harmless. DAMNIT!!
~Jester
"I have great faith in fools: Self confidence my friends call it." ~Edgar Allan Poe
I couldn't decide if I should moderate up/funny or down/troll.
So I just replied to say ROTFL
I am a new student at Arizona State University, and much of what goes on here politically is very confusing. One thing to understand though, there isn't really much behind these bills, they are just fodder for future political mudslinging... Banning co-ed dorms here would be entirely impossible because there is one dorm (the one I am currently in) that holds a huge majority of all on-campus residants, if it were to become male, or female only, there would be next to no other available space. There is very little chance of it actually occuring.
I also doubt the internet restrictions will pass, and suspect they are also just political manuvering. I wouldn't put it past the legislature here to do something like that though, but it isn't much of a concern as the dorms aren't wired anyway, the only place we have internet access is in the computer labs.
Welp, that's it for me. We're just going to have to kill all of the fasci^H^H^H^H^H Republicans. They are going to make this country a laughing stock. "Look at them," others will say. "They believe they have freedom, but it's only an illusion. They used to set the precedent by which other nations were judged, but now they are another third-world country that just wants to put all of their 'citizens' in jail." I'm gonna move to Canada.
i live here in tucson, don't go to the U of A, but have plenty of friends that do. Most of the people i have talked to don't really mind, since they don't use their connects for much more than chatting and the occasional download.
only the 'geeks' are the ones that are mad about it. Since there are so few of them(us) i don't think the U of A will listen much.
oh well... I won't be going there anytime soon.
---
http://www.spiderinteractive.net
So people will go through a proxy server like the defcon proxy or anonymizer, at worst. I can't imagine this even getting to a functional level, as I've found priceless info on geoshitties pages from time to time. In any case, the tech will be gotten around if it ever becomes functional.
as for no-opposite-sex visitation/restricted hours... riiiight. Who's enforcing those rules? RAs? Y'mean, fellow students? I've walked in the front door of dorms way past the witching hour. I've been smuggled in to women's halls. It's great fun to get around the security, why should this pleasure be restricted to only a few, when the entire nation could have the fun?
I should add that any campus looking to implement these rules should also instigate "first-two-years-must-be-spent-in-our-dorms" rules as well, or they'll get to see some awfully empty dorms.
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
You cant have those real and cyber sluts coming in to the male dorm can you? I mean what else is there to do other than bake your mind outside in the sun.
Thats what this is. I was thinking of going to the U of A. But with this going down I doubt it. Republican's are getting so bad these days I'm saddened to call myself one. I remember when republicans used to run their campaigns on the simple fact that democrats always screw up the economy, now they're just getting all uber-moral. Even Steve Forbes the guy I thought was a great money man is running on moral issues now. If the democrats knew anything about how to manage money, I'd be voting for them. Guess this is JAEoFUAP (Just Another Example of Fucked Up American Politics).
I'm going to do a write-in vote for Cthulu, why settle for the lesser evil.
Non gratis rodentus anus
> McGrath responded to this scenario: a student
> uses a campus Internet connection to decide
> which political candidates to support. That
> person is misusing university equipment, she
> said, just as if she used her legislative
> office phone to make long-distance personal
> phone calls.
I would guess that the "campus Internet connection" ISSUE will help students "decide which political candidates to support".... Not her for sure.
Supposed to be "Just your Average Linux User" but it got chopped off when they upgraded....
Maybe but did I miss something but when did slashdot officially anounce -2 level moderation?
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
My college tried to pass the same type of 'opposite-sex' dorm room visitation as well. We were able to have it killed very quickly when many students pointed out that this rule discriminated against heteros since gay/lesbian students could have their partners in their rooms without any restriction.
10 years later this same campus has 6 co-ed dorms with only 2 same sex dorms.
Somebody should ask the senator if this means he is 'pro-gay' and see how fast that gets re-worded.
this bill isnt going to fly. firstly, it'll drop the quality of education in setting up and running such a huge and costly monitoring network..anyone realise that network traffic at universities is 10 Mbps per node and EVERY node will have to be monitored under this proposal ? most big univs have at least 5000 nodes on their networks. plus each ethernet jack which can take a DHCP machine will have to be monitored..at 4 jacks per wall per room..plus the external traffic will have to be firewalled/filtered AND monitored at speeds of 2+ Gbps and above at most univs. most univs dont even bother firewalling since its too expensive and costly..theres no finnancial data or anything important on campus networks anyway. The proposal to ban opposite sex meeting in their rooms is laughable at best. methinks the senators slowly going insane.
But restricting opposite-sex dorm visitation? Excuse me? Most college students are above 18 (re: the age of consent). I don't think that the government has any right, or reason, to tell me that I can't have a girl in my dorm room, for any purpose, at any time of day.
This woman appears to believe that all dorms are created equal. I live at ASU in dorm housing with two bedrooms, a kitchen, family room and balcony. I'd say that the supervision already in place with 24 hour on duty Resident Assistants is sufficient to deal with any disturbance problems. The audacity of this woman to tell me that I cannot have opposite sex friends over in my family room is unbelievable! Maybe she will let us come over to her house to study.
Proposed bills would monitor university Web use, catalogs
everyone freaks out...
I can see it now.
"These young people come to our universitys to learn and perpare themselves for the future. They
should have no need or spare time to explore the
filth offered by the internet. So we must regulate
this unproductive use of our state owned equipment."
"And, while we are at it, we should increase tuition
to cover the cost of our internet connections"
I work in a residence hall and this proposal would be a nightmare to enforce. At my school we have escort and guest hours. During most of the day we can roam freely between buildings. During escort hours everyone that does not live in the building must be escorted by someone who does. After 2:00am, only residents are allowed in the building.
Those are the rules, but they are CONSTANTLY broken, and extremely hard to enforce.To try to enforce something like what is being proposed would take huge amounts of staff, or it would simply be broken routinely.
-------
provolt
Last I checked, most college students are over the age of 18, which makes them adults for all purposes other than drinking alcohol. Are there any tenant-privacy laws that would prevent this sort of thing from happening? Seems to me that for housing purposes, at least, the students are simply renting rooms from the university (which is owned by the state), so the relationship is tenant-landlord.
So the legality of this would depend on whether it's legal for landlords to prohibit these kinds of activities through a lease. Which, unfortunately, I believe it is. Still pretty damn lame, though.
On the bright side, perhaps this will wake up Arizona college students and get them to vote in large numbers...:)
I am Jack's complete lack of surprise.
Once the government starts telling you who you can have visit you in an apartment you are paying for, they have well-overstepped the lines of what they have the right to do.
Do I really need to comment on this?
--
McGrath responded to this scenario: a student uses a campus Internet connection to decide which political candidates to support. That person is misusing university equipment, she said, just as if she used her legislative office phone to make long-distance personal phone calls.
On the other hand, the same student, viewing the same pages for a class assignment, is using the equipment properly, she said.
That's exactly the same as forbidding students to use the university library unless they're only checking out books directly related to some class assignment. What a great way to further Arizona students' education, huh?
Oh what I wouldn't do to be living in this person's district, so I could run against her.
TOYWAR!!
Finding God in a Dog
Great, except you got the numbers wrong. It is 75 cents to the dollar now, not 60. I heard this figure on NPR just this morning. So really the men only get 25 cents, or one third of what the women get. Much worse than you thought, eh?
(To all you people who will misunderstand me: Yes, I am kidding, I understand that he is kidding, please do not flame me for being stupid, at worst, I am failing to be funny.)
First of all, the whole idea of "wasting taxpayer money for unrelated activities" is old and unsubstantiated. The cost of wiring dorms for internet access is the same whether you're researching or downloading p0rn. The act of monitoring requires extra software and extra staff. Our e-mail system here at work is tax funded, and we KNOW that at least 30-40% is non-work related. The cost of hiring two full-time techs to monitor every transaction far outweighs the tax money lost by sending unrelated e-mail. The same principle applies to dorm internet access. It's just not worth it. People are responsible for their actions, and whether they're researching or whether they're e-mailing bomb threats it's not the university's problem.
I find it interesting that she can even compare today's dorms to the 1950s. Back then people weren't in need of computers. Going to school now almost requires having full-time computer access, especially in the dorms. If McGrath wants dorms from the 50s, the school has to follow suit. This is the dumbest thing I've ever heard.
There is no reasonable defense against an idiot with an agenda
:wq
Maybe students should only be able to make phone calls to their professors to ask for help. It's not like the students are getting a bargain, tuition gets more ridiculous each year. For what they pay they deserve all the bandwidth they can use.
My other
High speed internet connections have become a selling point for universities that have it in the dorms; and a major stumbling block for those universities that don't.
Now, after investing who knows how much, they want to take away a large degree of that usability? These systems clearly have the bandwidth, so they can't claim that all the non-educational activity is stealing from students involved in educational research. Just another case of someone trying to superimpose his/her morals onto society. As long as no crime is being committed, the students should have full access to the internet.
As for that visitation thing; get real. At my school, some dorm halls had that, and those who wanted it could live there, but they always had a tougher time filling those rooms than those on the rest of campus. Apply it to the full University system, and off campus landlords will be rejoicing.
and i would hope that most people understand that college students are not children. they're on their own. the fact that they can vote demonstrates that they are trusted to be able to make THEIR OWN decisions on what's right, and on what's wrong.
since they can make their own decisions--why do they need some grumpy old, stuffed-shirt politician to do it for them?
not to mention the first amendment rights that it violates. freedom of speech--freedom to peaceable assemble--these are violated by restricting internet access (a means of speech) and by restricting co-ed visitations to dorms (a means of peaceable assembly, even if it be only a few people for a party or whathaveyou).
in short..it'll never happen.
(((one more time to kill the pain)))
visit my webpage
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(((one more time to kill the pain)))
What about the students studying art? Some consider pornography and art. Most college students a 18 so they should be smart enough to know what their doing and be mature enough to be productive. I can possibly see banning napster if it was talking a large chunk of bandwitch, but not filtering unpolitically correct information or stuff to that sort. That violates many freedoms we have... Hell, here at Penn State and most other campuses I've been at and visited you can pretty much find any mp3, program, or whatnot on the local LAN. Why bother using the outside net? :-) heh....
------- What exactly is real?
I see two ways of looking at this, in terms of property. The most direct way of looking at things is to say that the state owns the schools, and the lines leading to the dorms. Therefore, they should have the right to restrict access to the internet. However, this isn't like some parents burdening their kids with NetNanny; these are public institutions. By installing a "filter" to close off access to certain sites, which may be vital in expressing opinions held by the students, this legislation would restrict free speech in schools. Further, who is to say what is educational in the first place?
While it does seem to smack of censorship to limit internet access at schools to specific educational usage, it doesn't seem totally out of whack.
Given that bandwidth is a limited commodity, shouldn't that commodity be doled at an educational insititution *first* to those using for legitimate educational purposes? Tying up that bandwidth downloading porn, MP3s, playing games or anything else that's not specifically educational seems to be limiting network usage for people who are trying to do something educational with it.
The answer is probably not in censorship per se, but in tighter control of bandwidth. When I was a CSci student many moons ago, we were given mainframe accounts with a specific allocation of connection time AND CPU utilization. If you screwed around and played games, you burned up your CPU or connect time and coulndn't do assignments unless you went and bought more time. Assigned time was pretty generous and I always had a bunch left over.
Internet connections should have the same type of limitations. Each quarter you get X Mbytes of throughput. Use it for school or for screwing around -- but run out, and you're paying out of pocket. People who need more time (ie, I'm a CSci student writing networking software) would be granted more time, people doing internet-specific research could have their departments buy them time, and so on.
There should perhaps be "peak" and "offpeak" time or similar models so that screwing around at 3AM doesn't "cost" as much as doing so in the middle of the afternoon.
Four years is not that long . . . enjoy your mental prison camp!
And I thought that college was supposed to make a person liberal. When does life stop being a prison camp. We now have life being crappy from K-12 now we have life being crappy for 4 more years if you want to go to college. All I can say to this is ***************DOOOOOOOOOOHHHHHHH!!!!*****.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
As both a computer science student and a Resident Assistant, I fall on both sides of this edict - those affected by it, and those who would(if in Arizona) be required to enforce it.
Although RA's, in general, get a lot of flak for not "letting people have any fun", there is one thing that RA's generally have in common - we don't want to enforce more regulations then necessary.
In this case, I have a whole lotta problems with this. In effect, a regulation like the one dealing with inter-gender dorm visitation would require me to stop people from having sex.
I won't be doing that.
Mind you, this isn't a moral judgement. If you want to have extramarital sex, so long as it's legal for you to do so(i.e., age of consent), I'm not planning to stop you. That's your choice. I'm not planning to pigeonhole residents who live for me just because some state senator decides that Sex Is Dirty.
The network restriction is even more ludicrous. Porn viewers don't really hurt anyone. True, they take up shared bandwidth, but I doubt enough porn is shoved through ANY school's machines to make a noticeable difference in network traffic or available bandwidth. Second, this idea of filtering cuts to the very heart of free speech - in effect, you are preventing legitimate adults from using services that they have paid for in ways that are perfectly legal and don't hurt anyone. Some schools decide that they don't want porn on a school-by-school basis. While I may not agree with the decision, it's something that each school needs to decide. Personally, i don't see many schools deciding that monitoring porn habits is a good use of employee time.
Finally, I don't think that filtering enhances "education" any more. Is Slashdot eduicational? Well, I don't have any classes that talk about it, so not really. Same with the Weather Channel Online, CNN Interactive, etc. Where do we draw the line between educational and non?
The answer: Don't regulate it. If a school has a bandwidth problem, and they want to regulate, fine. But, don't regulate me because you have a "moral" problem with what I do, and because you're a state senator.
The more proxies there are available, the less effective any kind of censorship can be. Here's one easy-to-install CGI-based proxy. OK, it's a shameless plug, but there are other proxy programs available, both CGI-based and "true" port-based proxies (which are harder to conceal). But stash away copies in case you need them in the future, or to send to others who need them.
Thank god my girlfriends college doesn't have such a rule. I don't know what I'd do without spending those long weekends with her in her dorm... mmmmmmmmmmmmmmmmm.... Er, I should shut p now :-)
------- What exactly is real?
1. It dosn't sovle the problem, just covers it up.
2. It never works anyway, ppl will find away aroud it, or they will just blatantly keep in doing it. And i say good for them.
If you spend all ur time downloading porn, who really cares, they'll grow up. Of couse they are keep away from what they wan't the'll just want it more.
Censor ship sux, it never has worked, never will, and just ends up causing more harm then trouble.
do u really think that if everyone, every TV show, freely said fuck, or cunt, that those words would still be offensive.. i think not...
- - -
What the hell? Somebody actually sits in a room somewhere and thinks this trash up?
This is like telling a college student that they can't use their TELEPHONE to call home since it isn't for specific educational purposes! This lady should get down off her soapbox and take a chill pill. I think by the time someone graduates from academy, they're well equipped to think for themselves. What a concept!
If she was in any way endowed with intelligence, she would realize that many students would go somewhere else rather than be subjected to something as lame as this.
Get a grip.
I would say that running a Linux server is "appropriate educational use", especially for anyone studing computers.
The woman gets 60 cents, and the man who gets the other 40 cents is the TAX MAN... so the real man is left with zero!
I'm not a journalist, but I play one on slashdot
Another key issue for McGrath is the use of government resources, paid for by taxpayers, for personal matters, she said.
I wonder if the Representative has ever sent or received email from a family member while at the office...
"Understand you're having a little Jimmy Page trouble."
what really disturbs me about this is her comparing using her phone at work to make personal calls to a student using university internet facilities. AFAIK, she is being *paid* by the government of AZ to do her job. the phone in her office is part of the equipment provided for her in order that she can do her job. but a student is *paying* to go to university. this is a state university and, as such, is funded by taxpayers. but isn't also funded by the students' own tuition? so shouldn't the students have some control over the equipment they're paying for? (disclaimer: i don't personally know about AZ, but a PA resident does have to pay tuition to go to Penn State). if students choose to waste their time downloading pr0n, what else are they hurting besides (potentially) their GPA? by virtue of the student paying for their education, i feel that they are in a state wholly uncomparable to that of a Company employee.
and i'm not even going to comment on the blatant attempt to legislate morals here.
If you want to contact this fruitcake senator, her web page is
http://www.azleg.state.az.us/member s/jmcgrath.htm
Half of school is what you do outside of the class room while naked with someone of the opposite sex.
Okay, Internet connections are not being used for school work but that is a perk of living in the dorms. Living in dorm is kinda lame, but alot of places you have no choice.
The downside of dorms are someone is always looking over your shoulder, you can't have alcohol or drugs, you have to be around people you don't like, and you lose a alot of privacy. What you get are friends, knowledge of parties and a fast Internet connection. Take any of that away, and living in dorms is like living with your parents but costs *alot* of money.
I think this Republicain lady is alittle uptight. She probably was one those girls in the dorms that did not have sex, do drugs, drink or goto parties. So fo some wierd reason, she is taking it out on everyone else.
Linux O Muerte!
It is too bad you know... People describe high school like that and long for the freedom of college. Now there are people trying their hardest to make us describe college the same way. At least we can be assured that such efforts will ultimitly (pardon sp) fail. There simply aren't enough people out there that favor abolition of sex for it to succeed
who the hell is congress to say what private institutions can and can't do? If I want to make "Orgy U" I should be free to. Now, it may very well be that government funds these institutions...but depriving colleges' funding because of some groups moral agenda is just plain _wrong_. If nothing illegal is being done then the government should be blind to the specifics.
/everybody/. You can't have it both ways.
[rant]
You know, I've come to the realization that there is a fundamental paradox in the conservative movement. Conservatives, in my experience are usually also libertarians. Government is a necessary evil. They want less of it, and none of it in their business. They want complete freedom to pursue their own happines, without government sticking their noses in their business. YET, it is these same people, enjoying their right to picket abortion clinics, bear arms and form militias, who want to ram their special-interest moral-supremecist agenda through government onto YOU. Government shouldn't tell US what to do...unless of course it is restricting YOU from same-sex marriages, abortion, pre-marital sex, "perverting our youth", viewing pornography, saying dirty words, taking the lord's name in vain, being rude to elders, biting your nails, or any other form of being "un-American". Freedom works the same for
[/rant]
Ok, i've checked "No Score +1 Bonus" and put on my asbestos jacket...
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
I don't think that they will monitor .. ... but it's neccessary, without it the employees ....)
Just blocking all services and then only allowing
few selected is MUCH easier. If you install squid
on the gw server, with some descent logfile-analyzer, make squid only accept requests
with passwords, and voila, you have an easy system
for such purposes.
(I administer something like this in an company
would saturate our line 24/7
In Haiku:
Arizona has
students who will not stand for
shoddy connections.
I am a product of the Arizona University system (don't laugh, cry for me instead.) While it's nice that our governor wants to make headlines for herself, her ideas will never pass in this state. Arizona and Arizona State Universities pride themselves to much on being two of the few wells of liberalism in a rather conservative state. Denying students the right to fraternize within a dorm with the opposite sex would cut new (and current) enrollment drastically. As far as scaling back internet access, they would find themselves under less, but perhaps more effective, resistance. In a state that wishes to become a new mecca for tech-savvy employers to relocate, hindering the development of their potential work force would be debilitating. Granted, a majority of useage of the 'net might go towards wasteful projects (ordering pizza, porn, mp3s), enough of it is done in worthwhile pursuit that our governor should seriously reconsider her intentions. When the economy refuses to live up to the high expectation set for it within the state, the people would have no one to blame but their chief elected official.
So how can we expect people to learn to be adults, when we continue to treat them like children?
As a student at Arizona State University, representative McGrath's bill would directly affect me (I'm even reading Slashdot from ASU right now!) I have several questions regarding this bill:
1) McGrath states that using school computers/internet connections for anything other than research is a waste of taxpayers' money. If this is all paid for by taxpayers, where does my tuition money go?
2) Would I be prohibited from reading Slashdot and Freshmeat as well as porno sites?
3) I have a friend who's a security guard, and he says one of the most common arrests is of people having sex on the 50-yard line at Sun Devil Stadium. With this in mind, why is MCGrath so concerned about consenting adults doing it privately, in a dorm room?
4) College students are some of the most proficient crackers around. The administrators at ASU aren't the most knowledgeable (they reboot the HP-UX servers every night). Does anyone think a filter will really stop anyone?
I didn't attend college to view pr0n from an OC3, but this just smacks of one lady's deluded attempt to push her Puritan ideals on everyone else.
If I'm a news administrator, I have the right to decide what to carry on my news server, right? That's why spammers complaining about UDPs don't get very far with me.
Well, the fact is, if I own a network, I probably should have the right to decide what to carry over it. In this case, Arizona owns that network, its people presumably expect to provide that network for educational purposes, and its elected representatives get to decide what can be carried on it. (Unless it's a common carrier, or, as a governmentally-owned system, the 1st amendment applies, of course).
Students may be forced to find alternative internet providers (dialups) rather than use the campus network, just as you might have to find an alternative USENET source if you didn't want to participate in a UDP.
So, the bill can be right in principle (absent the 1st amendment issue). But totally wrong in practice if the goal is to save the taxpayer's money, of course -- it will certainly cost more to enforce than it will save in reduced "porn bandwidth".
(Now, you and I know that the goal is really to return to some kind of imaginary "when I was girl, people were proper" morality, but the argument is made on cost as well, and, if the democratic process works, will be answered that way in Arizona and this bill will go down in flames.)
Back in the 50's, yeah University was free or low cost. The state paid most of the bill. Now days you're lucky to get by under 2K a quarter.
My Point: State Funding for school hasn't exactly been on the raise in the past 20 years. Until the state can prove they're paying the majority of the bill I don't think they have any right ot dictate college life.
I think it would be much more productive to look at all the money that goes into college and figure out where that goes. Considering all the money that sports generate, money from alums., money from corporations, etc. Then consider sitting in a 300 student Calc I class being taught by the unpaid non-english speaking TA. Maybe the fact that most students who are paying their own way feel like they've been screwed has something to do with the drop out rate...
The most corrupt state in the USA? The one where all the spamming MLM pyramid-marketting comes out of (probably the only one where they're legal)? THEY want to get all high and mighty about internet access now?
*Those young whipper-snappers do nothing all day but look at porn* News for you, gramps, we do much more than that at the universities. I'm a student myself, so I think I'd know better than you. Tell me, what do you use your internet connection for? Reading Slashdot? Well, that's not educational. Playing a video game to relieve stress? Not educational. Checking your personal email? That's not educational. Checking web sites to see if you have enough bran in your diet? Nope. Trying to order new computer parts? Not educational. P.S. Please define Internet2 GigaPop
[/END RANT]
I went to a private religious-affiliated University (that should probably remain nameless) that had restricted visitation hours. You got caught, you got written up. If it happens many times, you get kicked out. :)
They had also installed filters to the campus network. They were removed fairly quickly because they didn't work to well. People were getting locked out of espn.com or some other nonesense.
A private University is well within their power and rights to do something like this...but I think they should really think it over before they do.
College is supposed to prepare students for the future. By treating the students like children and making curfues and installing web filters, a university is doing more harm then good. If a student is treated like a child, they will act like a child. I *know* this is true. I went to school with people like this. It was more like high school then college.
I've seen the same thing a hundred times with overbearing parents. My roommate is one big example, he is a child of very overbearing parents, not letting him make his own decisions. He eventually rebelled against his parents and now does whatever he damn well pleases (sometimes not to my aproval as his roommate).
Anyone ever read a Clockwork Orange? That example may be a little extreme, but I think the principle holds up well.
Enough ranting...
---
I wear pants.
Arizona is an extremely conservative state (except for Tucson!) and this sh*t happens all the time. At least our state government doesn't take bribes and governors get impeached all every few years.
Oh, geez, what was I thinking. They do.
Just a dude. Stuck in IT.
She said when she was a student at Arizona State University in the late 1950s...
Isn't that the real problem? This looks to be just political grandstanding, about issues she isn't prepared to understand, looked at through a viewpoint that's a half-century too old. And you know what? Older people vote, and older people will believe her when she says that:
the atmosphere at Arizona universities as "not conducive to learning." The primary indication of this, McGrath said, is the high number of students dropping out after their freshman year.
Actually, the reason a lot of students are dropping out after freshman year has little to do with the school, and a lot to do with American culture right now, which proclaims that you have to go to college. So people get there, and a good chunk decide it isn't for them. That's where her drop-out figures are coming from.
According to that article, neither the students nor the administrators want this bill, and she's pressing ahead anyway. Legislating morality, indeed. She just needs an issue to get popular on, there's an election coming up.
Communication is only possible between equals
..how much bandwidth does "educational material" require? If all I needed was educational material I would not have a cable modem. People don't buy broadband because they are having problems with getting to www.whitehouse.gov. They get broadband because they are having problems getting to www.whitehouse.com (i'm assuming everyone knows the difference between those two links). What I'm trying to say here is "What the HELL are you going to use 3MBps on educational material for?" Let people have their bandwidth. Leave us the hell alone.
~Jester
"I have great faith in fools: Self confidence my friends call it." ~Edgar Allan Poe
Now, how is this furthering education? granted, college kids downloading pr0n all night long aren't really getting much of an education in anything other than human depravity and anatomy, but why is it that so-called "lawmakers" fail to realize the great potential set forth by the existence of the internet? After all, at what point in human history has so much information been instantly attainable by anyone on the planet? And just because *someone* finds it offensive doesn't mean it's not information. Another thing, will this exclude news sites such as Slashdot that report on a wide variety of topics? Will they individually go in and check to see that the Astronomy majors aren't reading news articles about Gaming or Open Source? I'm thinking the only way to get around such proposals, should they come about (which, although ludicrous, isn't quite as laughable as I'd like them to be) is to just not declare a major at all, which leaves your options pretty much open. I feel sorry for those students, and for myself, since I plan to move to Phoenix in a few months and hope to attend law school while there. I'm also wondering if this will create a big enough impetus among students to move off-campus, thereby skirting these rules. Could the universities really do without all that room and board income? Someone should get McGrath a calendar. My God, we're a few months away from the 21st century, and yet we're still having to deal with people in power who are afraid of one of the greatest achievements in human history. And one more thing, the students are all ADULTS, no matter how much those in power don't want to admit it. What's more, they are paying for the privilege to attend these schools, public though they may be. College is not like high school, where everything is paid for by local taxes or government bonds. Let people control themselves. Hell, those who are sitting around in a circle-jerk around the latest www.insert-euphamism-for-something-sexual-here.com all the time aren't going to be around too long anyway.
-Man cannot survive except through his mind. --Ayn Rand
Agreed. I just wish they'd be a little less friggin *obnoxious*.
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
I've heard rumors that Arizona is also considering banning students from taking classes. There have been allegations that some students have been encouraged to think both in and out of class. Several faculty members stand to lose their positions if they continue to encourage such anti-conformist behavior in the student population. It is rumored that one cafeteria worker has already been fired for asking a student to decided between regular and low-fat gruel.
~Caliban
When does life stop being a prison camp.
Advantages of spending 4 years at Leavenworth, KS, for bank robbery versus a four year engineering degree: you learn valuable vocational skills at the government's expense, room and board paid, job placement that works, and same sex relationships just like the same sex dorms, but with beefier guys, and a high sucess rate --very few dropouts!
hehehe
In related news Senator McGrath has introduced a bill requiring that running hot and cold water must be used for specific educational purposes. Also, inviting a member of the opposite sex into the shower is right out.
I'm a little curious as to why we as humans would like to create this massive network that allows people to communicate freely, and for the first time ever really express their first ammendment rights. We all rejoice because the internet will allow greater distribution of information, of video, or audio. And then there are those that hate the internet, what it is now. It's a place where it's very simply to view pornography, or hate sites, and I don't particularly like that, but I can watch Cinemax at night and see exactly the same thing. Internet TV sucks, and there is no network programming on, because it would lose the networks money. The recording industry should have MP3s out of all its artists by now, but it would lose them money, or so they think. There are a bunch of people scared crapless of something that's nothing more than a way to distribute text, video, speech and audio. Tell me how all of this should be taken from college students. Why don't these authoritative figures, like parents and colleges realize that the internet isn't as big and bad as, through their ignorance, think it is. Adults, just sit back and take the internet for what it's worth, otherwise you should just lock your children in their rooms.
Is it just me or are Americans beginning to fear their freedom? I mean every day we see another one of these bills aimed at "protecting children" or getting rid of pornography. Why is that we seem to want restrictions on our freedoms? When McGrath says that she was responding to the concerns of students, she probably was. The concerns of small group of radically repressivce students, but the concerns of students nonetheless. I'm thinking this all has something to do with the decline in voting rates and participation in government. The only people using their right to free speech seem to be the ones wanting to restrict it. Okay, enough ranting. I'll have to rant at my elected idiot now for all the good it'll do.
Isn't a college education supposed to _expand_ your mind? Isn't the reason you get treated like cattle (among other reasons), so that you can _interact_ with your _peers_ (of any, and all, races and sexes)? College, besides stuffing information into your brain, is there to _expose_ you to the _real_world_, not to teach you to close your eyes and stick your head in the ground singing the smurf theme song when anything slightly controversial is introduced to you.
I don't see how cutting off access to peers and anything deemed "offensive" by the moral supremecy conducive to education. Um, shouldn't we be _exposed_ to and learn to _analyse_ "offensive" or controversial things?
The only thing a stupid bill like this would do is raise a generation of closed-minded ignorant bigotted people. Hmm...maybe that is why it was proposed...
Jazilla.org - the Java Mozilla
It's 10 PM. Do you know if you're un-American?
This is honestly the scary part of it. Clearly, there are sufficient votes in trying to pass these bans that it's worth infuriating large segments of the student population.
(Mind you, the students have no union. The UK's NUS would blow something like this out the water faster than you could say "urp!".)
First off, the best way to kill the bill is to kill the support. No votes, no risks, no bill. It's as simple as that. Whilst you fight on the facts, you'll risk losing, as voters don't care about the facts any more than the politicians do.
Remember that. Voters look after number 1, and if that means voting for an ultra-conservative, then you can wave your rights good-bye.
If that changes, though - if those same voters start to feel that they are impacted by this, somehow, they'll change their minds. Fast. Whilst it's someone else's problem - ESPECIALLY those "Pinko Socialist Students" who are so "stuck up" and "deserve to be kicked out of their ivory towers" - then why should Joe and Jane Bloggs give a damn? Far as their concerned, students are getting no better than they deserve. After all, learning and stuff makes people "stuck up and snobbish". It makes them "know more". In short, a lot of people think about as low of students as tech folk think of politicians, and the Right Wing thinks of Big Government.
The only way to change the minds of those voters is to get them involved. Make the fight personal to them, somehow, and make sure that they are on the same side of the fence as the students. There's nothing like personal ego and vested self-interest to change someone's mind.
Last, but not least, a call to all students in Arizona and surrounding States. Go on a Rent Strike, if the University's go ahead with this. Sure, they can threaten to kick you out, but no students equals no income equals no jobs for them. And their self-interest won't allow that. You can't lose anything but these paper-chains.
It's a small world and it smells funny; I'd buy another if it wasn't for the money; Take back what I paid (SoM)
WHOA. This is a little disturbing. Even though this "bill" probably doesn't stand a chance of passing (how much would a campus wide "internet filter" and budget for enforcing student behavior cost?) I am worried that a legislator (and a group of lawyers) would even *think* like this. This is definitely a matter for concern.
The most astounding thing about the internet (and the greatest potential) is the vast amount of information out there to be communicated. When we read books/magazines/newspapers we have to filter out useful information from the crap that is out there: the net is no different. If internet access is filtered, might as well check the library for some undesirable materials. Anyone for a book burning?
The content that is on the net is a reflection of society as a whole, in my opinion. There is nothing on the net that you couldn't find in "The Real World". Trying to limit access is the same thing as censorship, a strict violation of the First Amendment.
In my years in college (U. of Iowa), something similar was brought before the legislature that would have essentially limited research that the faculty could pursue. (I thought *that* was the most backward thing I had ever heard, until now...)
Is this type of thing becoming common all over the country?
Can we say this lady is living in the past? I mean seriously, it's like "let's protect people from themselves, and claim it's for a greater good we're doing it for."
:)
Really, this would be extreemly tough to pull off. For example I know of a few school where they're co-ed by room. (One room of females next to a room of guys, and so on) How are they going to watch everyone's room to make sure the females just don't happen to walk in a guys room or vice versa...install cameras, biometrics to get into rooms? That's just a ridiculious waste of time and money.
Besides I'd love to see these "room inspections" granted she was nice enough to remove that from the bill.
As for the network firewalling / monitoring. I don't know of many universities that would spend the time or have people on staff who are compentent enought to to run such a system. For example at a university that I know pretty well, they have switched over to almost a pure micro$oft implementation of everything, and in the past their computer science department had an easily rootable server.
I'm sure there may be some bright students who can run such a system for the university...but a lot of things are learned by screwing up. ie if they aren't experienced at this sort of things, along comes another bright student who finds a hole in the firewall and exploits it. So much for filtering and firewalling.
"If you insist on using Windoze you're on your own."
and you thought pr0n was bad.. look at her pic!
(Score:0)
by Anonymous Coward on 15:56 24th January, 2000 MDT
http://www.azleg.state.az.us/images/jmcgrath.gif
*gagging myself with an egg beater*
Anyone willing to spend some time doing "creative" enhancements to that little ol' photo. Maybe there's a larger version or perhaps a full body one.
Slashdot social engineering at it's finest
See, her bill is not about sex, it is about turning people from the opposite gender to their own! It's like cannibalism. See, she has an agenda! She wants to make sure that the college campus produces men that are open about their feelings and women who kick each other and fight dirty! INGENIOUS!
The message on the other side of this sig is false.
Why do they do this?
Dottering old blue hairs vote and you don't...
Shut up, be happy. The conveniences you demanded are now mandatory. -- Jello Biafra
I used to think that the Southwest was a bastion of freedom and tolerance. After all, it is the base of libertarianism in this country and produced the most civilly liberal political figure since Jefferson, Barry Goldwater. And now this?
Between the garrote of technocratic government on the Pacific coast and the Northeast, and the smothering reactionism of the South (and increasingly the Midwest), is there anywhere for an American to go if he just wants to be left alone in his ways and maybe pay a few taxes?
"Even genius needs a competent technique."--Robert Fripp
POLICE: "Police! Open up!"
POOR COLLEGE STUDENT: "Ooooooh, I already ammmmmmm..."
If you can't figure out how to mail me, don't.
For linux tips: http://www.linuxtipsblog.com
...of the disappearing "i,/i" tags...
.and. the kicker
McGrath responded to this scenario: a student uses a campus Internet connection to decide which political candidates to support. That person is misusing university equipment, she said, just as if she used her legislative office phone to make long-distance personal phone calls.
On the other hand, the same student, viewing the same pages for a class assignment, is using the equipment properly, she said
+&x
This is obviously a ploy to help with fund raising in an election year. People don't want real solutions, they just want to think they're doing something about the problems in society.
Tons of legislators put up hundreds of bills designed to go nowhere in state legislatures - this allows them to make impassioned speeches in front of big buck contributors who think Net censorship is cool and don't want to actually come up with real solutions that work.
Expect more of this - it's a big election year due to the Presidential elections, so they need even more dollars to reach even more voters if they're going to get reelected.
Will in Seattle
The point she is missing is students and their families pay for all those services through tuition and taxes. It's not like they're getting something free that should be restricted. When a student signs a housing contract, he is contracting for those services, and paying a bundle for it. There is no "free use of government resources" involved.
Anyway, the article as much as states that her bills, like so many offered by crank legislatures, stand little chance of even coming to a vote, let alone passing.
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
Whether or not this person is serious about this bill, as some posters haqve suggested, is irrelevant. The attempt to clamp down on pornography, mp3's etc, is part of a larger trend of oppression of the young that is sweeping america. As america gets older, its polititians become more conservative, more restrictive, and more out of touch with the youth of america. This bill is evidence of that, the age of adulthood has been increasing along with the average age of the population. Once you were considered an adult at 18, capable of making decisions like whether or not you should drink for yourself, now the age in almost every state is 21. Has the maturity of americas youth changed? no, nothing has changed, merely the perception of polititans that we are children and therefore have no rights, and can eaisily be oppressed. The youth still have the vote fortunately, one of the problems is that we dont use it. We need to send polititans a mesage, that we can take care of ourselves, that we arent children anymore, and we wont take this kind of crap like censoring and filtering an internet that we are building ourselves as much as anyone else.
/rant
I recently graduated from a mid-western college and lived under a very strict intervisitation policy that had been in place since the founding of the school: No opposite sex visitors in the dorms at any time except Friday and Saturday from 6 pm - 1 am.
The dorm advisors were the enforcers and were actually sent on patrols through the halls between 1 am and 4 am to listen for the sounds of the opposite sex. (Sad, I know.)
The students are overwhelmingly in favor of a change, but the president and board are children of the fifties and sixties. At that time, social biases kept men and women from developing friendships and pursuing the same majors. There was no need for mixed sex study groups. Few guys had friends who were girls or vice versa. The only opposite sex visitors were girl/boyfriends. The problem here is that the people who are trying to make these rules had a college experience that would be unrecognizable to most of today's college students.
Opposite sex ban: And what happens if the 'residence hall administrator' is of opposite sex than the resident? Well, they can't very well go in the room, now can they? This is absurd. Unless they plan on marching the local police into the dorms to enforce this (and boy, wouldn't that be a scene?), this law will have no effect. It will be left up to the RA's to enforce, and they just won't care. What this does do is establish the Hon. Ms. McGrath as a hardline, 'moral' conservative. She's probably positioning herself for a run for governor.
Mandatory internet filters: as someone mentioned earlier, there are plenty of ways around filters. Also, that any use of campus facilities for 'non-educational' purposes would be banned. Will the professors be similarly restricted? I think this would be practically unenforcable unless you essentially cut off the campus' connection to the outside world, which would send the professors through the roof.
If any of these bills were enacted as law, I'm pretty sure that the University would happily look the other way while business continued as usual.
Oh yeah, and if I were a student at the U of A, I would be offended at the implication that I'm a sex-crazed porn addict. You should all let your representative know what you think of her.
Free yourself. Everything else will follow.
opposite-sex dormroom visitation is on the block, too Sure, as if that's a problem for the nerds who only want the net access ;-)
If I pay so much goddamn money for tuition, why can't I whack off to my hearts content in my own dorm room to www.[insert porn site here].com?
(Not like I can afford to take a girl out for night on the town anymore)
Also... Doesn't the limiting of opposite-sex visitation count as sexual discrimination?
IANAL, but IAAM (I Am A Moron).
Looks like this politician is just trying to enforce what she sees as "questionable" behaviour.
But I ask yee, Slashdot readers... What dost thou consider questionable?
I guarantee that there will be hundreds of different answers...
"Fuzzy Wuzzy was a bear, Fuzzy Wuzzy had no hair... Fuzzy Wuzzy wasn't fuzzy was he?"
I love it! :-) This is probably the best (and funniest) way to combat this sort of dim-witted attempt at social engineering: embarass its sponsor into exile and submission. How do you think that Senator McGrath would react if she was referred to as "the author of the Gay College Students Privacy Bill?" Assuming that she didn't have a heart attack, or that she didn't run directly to church and begin copiously praying, she would probably begin to distance herself from the bill immediately. :-)
And the rest of the world could just chuckle from a distance.
A high-speed connection won't do you any good for SlashDot -- hell, you don't even need to upgrade to one of those fancy new "14400 bps" modems. "Waiting for reply..." looks the same at any bandwidth!
[evil sarcastic rude voice OFF]
unDees
"I call a baby goat a 'goatse.'" -- my non-Internet-savvy 6-year-old stepdaughter
Rep. Jean McGrath, R-Glendale, college kids are full blown adults in the eyes of the law. You can not tell them what they can and can not see, hear or do (within the current laws of course) on the internet. They are not your childern. All this bill does is rob those students of their freedom and make would-be-students of any arizona institution look elsewhere for their education. Can you say Kansas/Evolution? Sure you can! How can these twits stay in office? Do they really have a constituency to back them up? A constituency ready to rob other legal aged citizens of their rights? Sure these institutions are state funded (that's how they can legitimize all of this) but that doesn't mean these students don't shell out money for their internet connection too! If I pay for my connection (and I do even though I live in a dorm) I can do with it what I want. Just because the state paid the initial down payment on the routers doesn't mean they can dicate to me what I can and can't do with my connection. If they had paid in full for everything and were currently paying for my connection now then I would admit that they could limit it in any way they wanted. But then I wouldn't be living in a dorm.
The next remark is false. The previous remark is true.
W
Just cuz some idiot Republican in Arizona is a moron doesn't mean that all of them are. I have mostly Republican ideas but I don't think that coed visits should be banned or that the internet should be highly moderated. As far as I am concerned, all the old people in state and federal legislatures, both Democrat and Republican can go to China or wherever as long as they aren't telling me what to do when they don't even realize that it isn't 1930 anymore.
If you want my respect, give it first...
If you don't want my respect, expect mine before you give it.
...one with far stricter rules than this bill would provide, and they had no luck with enforcement.
There were no co-ed dorms. Students were not allowed to invite members of the opposite sex into their rooms. The rules stipulated no drinking, no smoking, no drugs, no dancing (you wouldn't believe the things Mennonites can talk themselves into), and absolutely-by-God no sex. RA's were expected to police the dorms to insure compliance.
I can tell you from personal experience that a good third of the students drank, a large number smoked, plenty of pot was smoked in and out of the dorms, and dancing wasn't considered serious enough to elicit serious rule-breaking. As for sex, have you ever known any large group of single 18-24 yr olds stuck together to abstain? I can assure you this group was no exception.
One of the English profs sang folk songs at a local bar, and a lot of her students showed up to listen to her. I caught my French advisor in a bar, drink in one hand, cigarette in the other. (I had snuck in on a slightly confusing foreign ID.)
The pharmacy across the street from the college had a quite sizeable stock of condoms, cigarettes, booze, porno and even rolling papers. They filled an indeterminate number of birth control prescriptions. The college clinic was even willing to provide prescriptions for birth control, and under the table would point women to the Planned Parenthood office in the city if it was a little too late for the pill. (Confidentiality was in the clinic's charter.)
Of the 16 guys on my dorm floor, there were at least 5 who received soft porn magazines through the college mail, two who could be relied on to have that month's Hustler, and one guy who got a variety of stuff with names like "Big Boobs and Classic Cars."
The rules were not even dimly enforceable.
This was before the 'Net and at a private, religious school. What on earth could lead this McGrath person to think that if a conservative, Christian college with the full legal authority to enforce whatever rules they saw fit couldn't keep the kinds of rules she has in mind, what leads her to think she can impose them through legislation when local college administrators are openly hostile to her rules?
Here at Michigan Tech, we pay for residential internet access, It's a service run by a seperate division of the school. How would legislators be able to control what effectively is a business?
Not about the no co-ed thing (since it descriminates against hetros but not homos), but about net filters and dorm searches. It's all paid for by tax payer's dollars. The net is too great of a learning tool to deny a university, but when it's funded by tax payer's dollars there should be some provisions so that it doesn't get abused. Bandwidth isn't cheap, and the tax payers shouldn't have to pay for it when it's just getting abused by l33t w4r3z h4x0rs and streaming video porn sites.
/. Oh sure people bitch that the gov't spends too much money on dumb projects, but give us free net access and a grow lite in our dorm closet for our pot plants!
ASU is renowned nationwide as a party school. If you've ever been there (I live 3 miles from it) you'll notice that they have these little blue lights all over the campus. Everywhere. Those are date rape/emergency phones. Attacks by drunken assholes happen so often at ASU that they had to put in call boxes everywhere on campus. They are literally every 30 feet, on every stairway, sidewalk, etc. It's no wonder they want to change the atmosphere there. They have every right to do so, for the dorms are owned by the state. As such they should have a right to look at their own property and make sure it's not getting trashed, just like a landlord in an apartment complex has the right to enter your apartment to make sure you are not violating the lease (pets, too many tenants, etc).
There seems to be a lot of hypocrasy on
--- A Jesus Fish eating a Darwin Fish only proves Darwin's point.
In the '50s, when Rep. McGrath was a student, students were subject to random inspections, and not allowed to have visitors of the opposite sex. Then the '60s and '70s came, and with them, US involvement in Vietnam. 18-20 year olds, who did not have the right to vote, were drafted. It occured to a few people (remember "Eve of Destruction"?) that someone who could be drafted is, in fact, an adult. It occured to so many people that they passed a constitutional amendment in 1971 giving 18 year olds the right to vote. Along with this came even more -- if 18 year olds are adults, perhaps we should stop treating 18 year old college students like children. Restrictions on students living in dorms were relaxed.
And now, we have a proposal that takes a step back towards treating adults like children. Sheesh.
but she will never succeed in changing the behavior of college kids. The University of Tennessee has for years run dorm space with no opposite sex visitation allowed (the so-called Virgin Vault :) .... but that never stopped rebellious and resourceful Vol coeds (male and female) from sneaking into their opposite numbers' quarters in order to *ahem* discuss the Big Bang Theory. Nor does it prevent them from simply living off campus (or worse :) yet, in a Greek house) and thus circumventing all the restrictions altogether. (Alcohol is completely and totally prohibited on UT campus. Greek houses, however, are private property.... can you say, KEGGER?)
What goes beyond all reason, though, is the censorship of political ideas. Is it not the function of an institute of higher learning to revel in the free exchange of ideas, and by doing so to expand one's mind? College students are, mostly, of the age of majority (at least to vote), and neither need nor desire protection from so-called dangerous ideas.
The poor lady is deluded if she thinks she's going to do anything more than be a giant pain in the toosh to the good people of the State of Arizona. But I think it goes beyond that. The lady wants complete and total control of the still-malleable minds present in her state's universities, and she's like to get it if she's not stopped.
By whatever means necessary.
She thinks she has the right to impose her morals on adults. She would use the power of the state, which is the power of legal[sic] violence, in order to do so. This is doubleplusungood. She wouldn't get her way this time, as I've said, but that won't stop her from using increasingly more draconian measures in order to do so. And remember, she has the State's guns to back her up.
The Internet censorship issue is more than likely provably a First Amendment violation. But I don't think we should have to wait that long for our freedom. McGrath has been exposed. She should now be removed as a representative and steward of the peoples' rights. I leave it to the people of Arizona as to how.
--
We cannot legislate against all the stupid things people will do. -- Jesse Ventura, Governor of Minnesota
This kind of stuff makes me sick
Wow. This is just too lame for words.
Alright, so when will representatives realize that their job is not to dictate what their constituents want, but to ask them what they want, and how they want to implement it? Arizona is a notably weird state... but this is obviously a ploy, on the part of the representative, for publicity towards the issues that she would like to see debated on the road to the White House.
Bad luck to her... this is a totally political move, and has nothing to do with the issues actually being debated.
It'll never fly.
Like I said, too lame for words.
--jurph
This bill sounds like a horrible attempt to keep adults from using resources they pay for to research whatever they please. Internet access in dorms is not a state supplied resource, such as the phone line in the Congresswoman's office. The student pays for tuition and housing. Yes, the state does pay for a portion of the costs, but only for in state students.
The idea of preventing this so called misuse of public resources is a farce. The cost of implementing and managing filtering would likely outweigh any cost savings.
Where does ligitemate student research of medical issues come into play. Who decides what sites should be blocked. The software that's available is meant to block sites that are inappropriate for children. College students are adults! College students are there to learn.
The idea of banning men from visiting women's dorm rooms and vice versa is even more rediculus. What are they going to do about homosexuals? Ban them from the dorms?
I understand filtering internet access in primary and secondary schools. Those students are minors, and the school has a responsibility to make a reasonable attempt to not provide material the parents wouldn't approve of. However, when children become adults, they are supposed to have the right to make decisions for themselves. If mommy and daddy want to have someone watch over their young adults, and make sure they aren't doing anything they don't approve of, there are numerous private schools which provide a more controlled environment. The government should not be stepping in and censoring what adult students can see or do. I understand that pregnancy among freshmen girls is a serious problem, but banning dorm room visitation is an overly draconian solution. At what point do we teach people they are responsible for their actions.
The internet is an exelent source of information of all kinds. These young people should have the chance to form their own opinions and make their own, informed decisions.
Random dormitory room searches? Yeah, right. The day someone feels the need to rummage through my personal belongings without a search warrant is the day they learn what a steel toed boot feels like.
Our state university doesn't educate me well enough for what I pay in the first place. When the government tries to restrict my free time at school, they are are over-stepping their duty.
This all first started when she began attacking the women's studies program. After that she was more or less silent until here when McGrath decides that co-ed dorms are immoral. After a huge amount of flame from students, she responds, and says she maintains her position. More receantly the U of A reagents had to get in on this and defend the school. Then, of course, there is her latest and greatest bill, to limit internet acces that was introduced just receantly.
All said and done, she's got the campus riled up quite a bit. Some of the student replies have been most instructive.
Enjoy, and bear with us, this is *by far* the most hits we've ever seen in this short a time span.
It sounds more like rules for prison... Visitation? maybe if you can get in to a low-security university, you can get congical visitation. it seems like if i was going to be going to college i would definately _not_ want to live in a dorm.
i just put in
(1) Driving a car was unregulated.
(2) Flying a plane was unregulated.
(3) Radio and TV was unregulated.
(4) Practicing law and medicine was unregulated.
and currently: Surfing the net is unregulated.
I'm certain that someday, and attempt will be made to "license" internet users. Net access without a license will be made illegal much as driving a car without a license is illegal. The license idea will be hyped as a way to (1) protect children from seeing evil content and (1a) "empowering" parents by letting them decide what is acceptable for their kids to see [licenses will have a maximum allowed-to-see MPAA style rating], (2) tracking down and stopping pedophiles distributing kiddie pr0n and, (3) stopping piracy of music/movies/software by ending anonymity.
Who will speak against this?
Is a "dorm room" something like what I live in, a couple of cheap rooms with common kitchen or so where you stuff in lot's of poor students?
And is this univerity level students we are talking about, grown up (>18) people, with, uh, legal rights?
So what's this about 'no opposite sex' and 'inspections'? People have more rights than what this sounds like in swedish prisons and then complain (rightly so) about always being watched and forced by Big Brother. I'm a little shocked here...
If I can't have girls in my room, I'll need the net for something other than education...
And if I can't go to those sites, then I need girls in my room!
Set up Apache+mod_ssl to listen on the gopher port (70). Then https://server:70/proxy/http://www.foo.com and you're golden. There's a decent chance that gopher isn't blocked by the firewall, it's probably not monitored, and you've got SSL anyway.
If we let the people behind bills like this have their way, you can kiss progress goodbye. A slack-less, hack-less, neutertopia where a career in computing will probably require background checks, a loyalty oath and future of COBOL and Ada work.
Stefan
I remember seeing somewhere recently (It may have been on one of those cheesy talk shows, but I am not sure) that people have been quoted as saying "I no longer need drugs - I have the internet" Of course they were refering to sex sites and other highly addictive habits such as online chatting/romance etc...
Just wondering... If it was conclusive that porn was addictive (And I believe all though I have no physical proof that most studies would tend to agree that it is) Wouldn't it make it the Internet Provider's moral obligation to do what he could to prevent his users from being addicted to things they couldn't control?
Maybe not, but it is at least an interesting question. Anyways, I am personally of the opinion that the school/state is supplying the internet, so they have the right to strip whatever they please out of it. If the college students were buying the access themselves, I think it would be a different issue.I'm a foreign student studying in America, and the most important thing I've learnt from university education here is freedom, or the right to live your life as you want it.
The freedom to make your own decisions - which must include the freedom to have sex in your dorm room or download porn over the Internet if you want. Letting students make their own choices is the only way they can grow into adults capable of making reasoned decisions. If you want to take children and turn them into capable adults, then you must treat them as such and give them all the rights which adults are entitled to.
The freedom to choose is what separates a university education from high school, a great university from a mediocre one, or even a great and free country from a dictatorship. What she proposes will do the students in Arizona a great disservice.
Oh come now. This would never fly! The reason some (most [all]) people even go to college is to surf, get drunk, and get laid!
Oh yes, and those nice pieces of paper which get you a good job.
--
- Telephones are to be used for official reasons, and filters will be put into place that only allow phone calls to immediate family and school officials. Pager, beepers, and cell phones will be confiscated.
- Postal Mail will also be limited to official use. All other mail will be opened, read, cataloged, then destroyed.
- Socialization between students will only be allowed in authorized places, during authorized times, and only for official school business.
- To prevent unhealthy diets, only approved food will be made available in cafeterias. Anyone caught smuggling food on to campus will be subject to displinary action
- Weekend passes will be given to students to leave campus; however, students will only be allowed to visit campus approved establishments, where campus police will be stationed to make sure order is kept
- Any person (student or not) who attempts to circumventing any of the above laws will be subject to a special statute that allows any disciplinary action deemed necessary by the school officials, not limited to fines, jail, forced labor camps, or death.
"...And get used to it, because once we get these laws passed, we're one step away from doing this to everyone in the country!"_______
2B1ASK1
I've noticed people saying "The university and the state have a right to monitor the activity since it's their network." I attend the University of Illinois. I pay a tuition. My tuition is not paid for. I pay thousands of dollars a year for tuition. After those thousands of dollars, I pay an extra fee to have a T-1 connection in my dorm room. I pay for at least some of this myself, not the state.
I would highly recommend whenever your constitutional rights are threatened, confront the individual. What I find amazing is that Rep. McGrath probably didn't think that anyone would have any problem with her proposed legislations.
In any case, here is her email address--feel free (espcially Arizona residents) to voice your concerns to jmcgrath@azleg.state.az.us
-k
http://www.azleg.state.az.us/members/jmcgrath.h
For all of your who live in Arizona, I have one suggestion. VOTE! If all of the college students who think this is a really stupid idea vote when this state senator comes up for reelection, it would likely spell the end of her political career, and send a message to anyone else with ideas like these. If you don't like it, vote her out of office. Considering the percentage of the populous that actually votes, a large number of college students suddenly getting politically active would likely make a significant difference. Spread the word to students in her district, and do something about it.
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
If you can attend any public debates or other candidate appearances, ask the candidates as visibly as possible what they think about censorship and the right of adults to read whatever they want. If they say "not if the government's paying for it", have a response ready, perhaps "I'm the one paying taxes for it and I don't want the government to censor me or my children", or another response of your choosing.
be a left winger. too bad liberalism the way to socialism, just ask the head of the former socialist party: "The American people will never knowingly adopt Socialism. But under the name of "liberalism" they will adopt EVERY fragment of the Socialist program, until one day America will be a Socialist nation, without knowing how it happened. (Former Socialist Presidential Candidate) - Norman Thomas"
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
Like, this is stupid. Are foriegners the only ones that thing that the United States of America is the land of the free? It seems that at every opportunity, I see LOTS of bills that look like they'd be more suited towards Nazi Germany rather than Washington DC.
I'm probably going to burn some Karma on this one, but why not skip this slow slide into despotism; If history classes actually taught in the US, the electorate should be able to see in a second where all these bills lie. The erosion of personal freedoms is something that has happened in countless empires before the current holder of the title, and it appears that it will continue to!
So, let's all save some time. It would appear from an outside observer's persepective (I'm Canadian) that some of the things your government would like include:
YEEEESH. Wake up and smell where this heads, and it isn't pretty. More reason to concider a move to europe. Where they worked most of this stuff out in the _last_ revolution.
Kudos!
..don't panic
(This is what I sent her. Feel free to rip off entire paragraphs, or even send a physical copy, which I did not do.)
I recently became aware of a bill you have propsed concerning two seperate issues for university students. One is the preventing of guests of the opposite sex in their rooms. The other is concerning filters to be placed on university internet connections, to prevent unethical use. I felt it would be important to get a feeling of the people you are representing in this bill.
First I'd like to address the issue of censorship. Who are you to propose what is 'proper' for a student to view? Most college students are 18 when they reach college, and hence are viewed by the state as an adult. As an adult, you are able to be tried for the death penalty, and have all the responsibility associated along with being 'an adult'. Because of all the pornography on the internet, I can understand your concern for wanting to limit internet usage for 'specific educational purposes'. But, who is to decide what is 'decent' for college students to view? In most college universities, it would be an over-worked administrator. Having been a network administrator at a State University, I can say that instituting this policy will be difficult and unrewarding. However, should each college
administrator 'decide' what is 'educational'?
For instance, being a party-independant canidate, I might block all access to Republican web pages, but let through an alternate candidates site?
This has too much room for abuse and negligence. Also, it is censorship in it's purest form. By placing restrictions on students viewpoints, we limit their possibilites as individuals in this nation of ours. A universities choice in what they want to block on the internet is their choice. If they have half of their resources consumed by students going to a pornography site, I'm sure they will take care of the problem. A more conservative school might choose to block all non-educational sites.
But any school that my son or daughter attends will have full access to any materials that are legally available on the internet. They are adults, and I will raise them with the accordingly appropriate values that I believe in. And as they are adults, they are competent to decide for themselves where their interests lie.
The other issue is one of opposite sex visitations. This is also censorship in the expression of the students, and encourages sexism. And the same rules can be made as above with each school deciding. At the state-sponsored university I attended, there were coed and single sex dorms. I chose to be in a coed dorm, because it's important to be able to socialize with everyone, not just people of your own gender.
I'm not sure if you are aware of this, but the best chance that people of this generation get to socialize is at college. Your best chance as a single guy is while at college, with a higher chance of the proposed mate being both intelligent and unmarried. This takes away a huge social element for today's youth.
Also, it encourages males to be friends with other males, and females to be friends with other females. While in college, about half of my friends were female, and I would not restrict people's choice in friends. This encourages people to consider the opposite gender as 'different' which encourages sexism.
Finally, any values I've instilled in my offspring I believe will reflect their behavior in the dormatories. and if I'm a good parent, they will behave as I consider to be proper. And that is my own decision, not my governments.
This bill represents a blow to censorship, and obviously displays your distain for young adults everywhere. While your position in the Republican party might not rely on the youth vote for your current position, I encourage you to realize that Censorship in any form is the first step towards a Socialist state, and not a democracy. How soon till we start to censor state-sponsored atrocities, in interest of protecting adults?
College students are adults and should be treated as such.
Thank you for your time.
Benjamin "Gonzo" Granzeau, age 25, male
(Feel free to use any of the above message in the spirit intended. Also, if you would like to speak to me in person about the above topic, I would be happy to call you to help.)
--
Gonzo Granzeau
Gonzo Granzeau
"Nothing the god of biomechanics wouldn't let you into heaven for.." -Roy Batty
Sounds like what I would expect from Arizona. Ever go to school in Utah? You won't be employed after graduating but you will see a way of life like no other in this country. It's amazing that part of the country is on the same continent.
Does any part of the students tuition go to pay for the Internet access? And if so, does that change the picture, as the students are paying for the service. Would your average ISP be willing to censor your Internet viewing? (I dont think so)
So if state university students in Arizona can't get an uncensored internet from the school, can they pay to install a cable modem? Can they trade porn between their own computers? But the internet filtering is an issue of the government controlling services that it provides (assuming the students don't pay for the bandwidth), which I don't have a political problem with (though I am for damn sure not recommending anyone to go to college in Arizona). But telling people that they can't go into dorms of the opposite sex...that's archaic. Sure it was like that in the fifties, but this isn't the fifties. If you ask me, this senator just wants to decrease enrollment in Arizona universities.
In order to make an apple pie from scratch, you must first create the universe. -Carl Sagan
Here's the email to drop a line to if you want:
jmcgrath@azleg.state.az.us
I already sent off my reasoning telling her why she was a stupid old lady.
Trying to limit people's internet access and opposite sex visitation rights is just plain wrong. I mean, if there was a bill to take old people off the highways, there'd be hell raised. And they are much more dangerous...scientifically...deteriorating eyesight, slower reflexes, weaker muscles and bones. It goes on. But yet, some old ho can sit up on her high horse and tell people that since she didn't get any in college nobody can...unless you're gay.
Well...I think it's time to come with some slashdot pain. Bring da noise, especially if you're from Arizona. And people...if you're going to flame...flame intellectually. Sending stuff like, "You must be gay." and "Your laws suck." are just going to strengthen her resolve.
However, likening her to the old woman on your block who thinks that soda pop should be 5 cents a bottle like it was in her day...that might score some points for the good guys.
Netjak.com independent reviews of domestic & import video ga
Since the separation of church and state are guaranteed from the establishment clause of the Bill Of Rights, only students who are registered in Religious Studies can access these sites. For everyone else, CUT 'EM OFF!
Ain't censorship fun? Soon, all we'll have left is Mickey Mouse, and we are working on ways to get rid of him, too!
Just a dude. Stuck in IT.
Besides, if this lady doesn't think that a college-full of kids sitting around with an ethernet connection would find someway around the filters, she's crazy.
Also, I'll take the chance right now to say remind everyone that the internet really got started at Universities with professors sending email to one another. Were those emails always about education? Did we complain when they were personal?
Finally, I'd like to note that I do live in a co-ed dorm (my roommates nextdoor are female), so you can imagine a rule about having a girl in my room would be pretty stupid.
Got HTML? Want LaTeX? Try html2latex
- Sexual discrimination This is a biggy. Seriously. What's the difference between saying a man/woman can't go somewhere and saying a black/white/Indian/European person can't go somewhere? You can argue all day about intentions to do things not conducive to "proper" study habits, but there's no way to say that a guy's buddies aren't coming over to play N64 games and otherwise deter studying.
- Discrimination Against Heterosexuals If the primary goal of this legislation is to stop in-dorm procreation, it's clear cut that this is a very narrow-minded way of doing it. Two counter-examples can be provided:
- Lack of Jurisdiction While state colleges are publically-owned and under jurisdiction of the state congress, such a policy is discrimination by sex and, hence, unconstitutional. The power to deny freedoms based on gender is expressly denied in the US Constitution. Were such a bill to become law, it would be impossible to enforce if the defendant were willing to appeal to a higher court.
- Hypocracy While senators and representatives may have strong opinions that sexual intercourse impairs proper study habits, and they may believe that they have the moral duty and power to prevent such actions from taking place, I would like to point out that any public officer in favour of such a bill that has received any sort of sexual favours in a public building, public office, or motor vehicle representing a public office is a hypocrite.
Perhaps it's that I'm enrolled in a very liberal university (Rice, down in Houston), but I really can't see how lawmakers think that they can get away with such a blatant disregard for the principles upon which this country was founded. I mean, here at Rice, sexuality is regarded as part of life--your personal life. What you do behind closed doors with intimate partners is your business. Others, most-likely don't want to hear about it, nor do they care. I guess we have more of a community atmosphere down here than a "Students" versus "The Adults" environment. I don't know. I just really don't see any other way to be mature about it. If nothing else, we're adults dammit! We can think for ourselves, make our own money, wipe our own asses, and vote on whether or not these fascists will remain in office With regard to Internet access.... They actually have more ground here. The public pays for the Internet access for the education use within the public college. The only argument the students have in this scenario is censorship. Internet access is not a right (though I wish it were) and since state funds are being spent on it, they do have jurisdiction. However, if the public displays that such policing is not in their interests, legislatores will be wary to vote for an unpopular bill. It's still an oppressive regime of treating adults like children and it sickens me. I would suggest that any concerned students in these schools threaten to study elsewhere if this bill were to pass (IE: threaten beforehand so the universities put the heat on the state). Demonstrate! Be vocal! Show them that you mean it when you say. I am a voting adult! Dammit! Respect My Authoritah!!!- Other-gender study partners
- Same-gender intimate partners
I realize that homosexual and bisexual persons have endured similar oppressions in the past and still endure them today, but I think we can all agree that the way to harmonize this situation is to stop such personal micromanagement and let people decide things for themselves.Pining for the days when The Glorious MEEPT!!! graced SlapDash with his wisdom.
Coming from a city (Hong Kong) where every single school (as far as I know) requires public school kids in uniforms, perhaps I'm missing the point why uniform seems like some conformity suppression placed on poor kids. Why is it necessarily bad? And why is it acceptable when grownups in the army/navy wear uniforms? Is that suppression as well?
http://www.azleg.state.az.us/memb ers/jmcgrath.htm
jmcgrath@azleg.state.az.us
As an ASU student, I am totally against these two bills. The day I heard about the dorm room proposal I hunted down her web site and fired off two emails stating as such.
Weeeeelllllll... more accurately, it has to do with the pressure from the religious right, who are about twice (?) as likely to vote as everyone else. The religious right is quite strong in Tennessee, so politicians of all parties will court them. However, Republicans are historically much more likely to pander to them than Democrats. If you doubt this, then try to find a Republican politician in Tennessee who is willing to take a stand against the religious right there. Good luck.
I've also known some pretty conservative "Democrat" politicians in southern states.
I am neither Democrat nor Republican. It's true there are idiots in both parties, but as a whole, based on their national voting record, the Democrats have been much more concerned with civil liberties such as freedom of speech and assembly. Gun control is the only issue where this is reversed.
"McGrath responded to this scenario: a student uses a campus Internet connection to decide which political candidates to support. That person is misusing university equipment, she said.....
On the other hand, the same student, viewing the same pages for a class assignment, is using the equipment properly, she said."
Oh! OK, now, how do we set up the filtering software for that little scenario? That was real well thought out, a testament to benifits of that great 50's style education she refered to in the article.
I assume that same student would be "misusing univeristy equipment" by reading the newspaper provided at the library and forming a personal political opinion.
This sounds like a disturbing and complete lack of understanding on almost all levels.
However, there is a lovely workaround! As long as each student had one professor who had a project each semester to use the internet to "enrich your minds", anything you used you could say has educational value and therefore permissable. How about a 0 hour internet usage class :)
So of course that brings up the workaround for the coed visitation clause. Have the rooms be coed! Therefore the people of the opposite sex are not visitors to people of the wrong gender!
Well, that's obvious. The drivers, flyers, broadcasters, lawyers, and doctors will speak agai-- oh. Never mind.
---
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
Is this only for Arizona University or every university in Arizona? The blurb said "all Arizona university campuses" so I am unclear. If this applies to all universities in Arizona, including private ones... whoa, this is downright evil.
If it applies just to Arizona University, its more understandable, its not privately owned. When you accept government money, you have to accept the strings. I would even think this was understandable for any student that gets money from the government that they don't have to pay back (grants, scholarships, etc). Just as before, you accept the money with considerations. If the considerations are unpleasant, you don't accept the money. You have no right to accept money on a set of conditions and then demand that those conditions are unfair.
Esperandi
If this applies to private universities in Arizona as well and you live in that state, I would move. Fast.
We were about to put together a summary for the network people but then I came up with a better solution - I transferred to another college. :-P
As for the opposite sex visitation thing, I don't think I need to comment on that, there's no way in hell that will last long among the horny college student population.
- -- ---Poppa Squirl--- -- -
"If the hole is too small, the hamsters won't fit."
- -- ---Poppa Squirl--- -- -
"If the hole is too small, the hamsters won't fit."
-Anonymous
Oh, and I expect it would also mean less students in state or out of state who'd be interested in going to college in the state. Of course you could probably also make a case that it discriminates against the lower income residents of the state who can't afford to attend college outside the state. Since the students with the most talent always learned more from exploring the network, the low income students with real talent could lose that edge which could cost them jobs in the future and keep them in their low income situation. Which probably suits Republicans just fine.
With cable modems and DSL rapidly becoming more available, that high speed access is becoming less and less relevant.
I'm trying to teach myself to set people on fire with my mind... Is it hot in here?
The thing that bothers me most about it is - if you treat people like kids (IE - they aren't smart enough to make choices for themselves), then they tend to act like kids. It was amazing how many people I encountered in classes who were really thrown off by classes without rigid structure/due dates and spoon-fed material. I didn't think these people were stupid - they were just born in an educational system which never exposed them to thinking for themselves - this is just the same thing outside the classroom.
The ol' "If you're old enough to be drafted and die in a war" mantra pops up, of course, but I don't think age is the whole story. People like Rep. Jean McGrath don't want ANYONE looking at porn sites, having sex before marriage (or whatever justification behind coed visitation restrictions), etc. These people want to enforce their belief system and their ideas on everyone. "Kids" are a great target, because society in general generally accepts kids shouldn't be exposed to some things for awhile.
Problem is, college students aren't kids, and no one needs to be making their choices for them. It's particularly insulting for those students who are basically financially independent (via loans/grants/their earned income) - gee, everyones old enough to 1) Vote 2) Get drafted 3) Pay Taxes 4) Stand trial as an adult -- but we need to impose these limits on college campuses. It's always good to try and understand an opposing viewpoint, but reasoning like this will never make sense to me.
Anyway this is just another good reminder for all of us to fight back the apathy and vote for the lesser-evil candidate.
It's kinda simple, really. It's a state run school, so they really don't have much say when it comes to being told what to do by the state government. I'm blessed with the luxury of going to a private university (and looking at some state run schools and wishing I were there...), since we provide the school with most of its income, they know better to do something like this. We can stand for some things such as banning Napster, or mp3s in general (effective spring term, here :( ), but "blocking sites that aren't educational" and "opposing opposite sex dorm visitations"... Do we really live in the 50's? To Jean McGrath, apparently.
:(
I'm sorry Ms. MgGrath, R-Glendale, but this is the 21st century. We are the future. If you're going to want to tell people what to do, most are smarter than to just lay down and let you have your way with them. The solution is simple -- enrollment will drop, and you'll be voted out of office next term. You seem to forget that nearly all college students are of legal voting age, and while we do not have much reason to vote, someone like you in public office would be enough to make me run out to the next poll and pull the lever for your biggest opponent.
They are our public servants by definition, but most abuse the system, and others are so out of touch with reality... Sad
_____________________
We already do that here at TAMU, what do you think the real purpose of the bonfire is? Really, A&M was rated one of the most unfriendly to gay/lesbian schools, I think we're number 2 behind Notre Dame.
Perhaps what they should do is have a filter on the college's T3 line, then install a fractional T1 that has no filter.
I hate it when people waste my bandwidth by downloading porn and warez. I couldn't care less what they do in their dorm room, as long as it's legal (human sacrifice is right out).
Would you be opposed to the filtering if it were part of the Terms Of Service that students have to agree to when they sign up for net access? If they are allowed to opt-out of net access and have that charge removed from their tuition of their bill or however it is charged, wouldn't it be a fair solution? Students that do not want to/intend to abide by the guidelines put out by the people who are footing the bill for this service could get access from a local ISP.
now, this may sound like I'm all in favor of the filtering, I'm not. But I do think that this is more valuable viewpoint than trying to argue that the colleges have no right to put limits on students net access. If students can opt out, an organized boycott can happen and it could really punch the university hard. If 10,000 students opt out of paying the fee, the university will be footing the bill for that fat pipe of their without enough help. Something would have to give soon.
Yes, the utopia is unlimited superfast access, but you have to consider how to get there. Arguing that someone should not be allowed to put restrictions on how the services they provide are used does not have a very good chance of working. You can picket all day long for them to stop making ugly brown cars, but if you keep buying them or if the charge for those cars is snuck into some other bill of yours, they'll keep making ugly brown cars and no legislator will listen to you. But if you boycott those cars and pay don't pay for them... well... how many ugly brown cars do you see on the showrooms sporting a 2000 year marker?
Esperandi
At least at the university of iowa, i shell out a considerable amount of money for "Student computer fees" plus internet access in dorm rooms costs extra money, i assume its similer across the country, even out lab computers say "payed for by student computer fees" so i'm paying for my internet access directly to the school, not thru taxes. plus how is it gonna cost a school less to not useing as much bandwidth? are they gonna try to run the entire school out of a single t1 line? I think not. Lets not forget that students these days really need to know how to use the internet when they go out into the real world, all these bills will do is give students a lack of expierence and as such, a disadvantage over students at every other school in the country.
oh, lets not forget what kind of state government we are dealing with. as i recall this is the same state that refused to recognize MLK Jr's birthday untill long after everyone else.(btw, i may be mistaken here, but i don't think so, but if so, i appologize)
This bill appears to have failed in a floor vote today, 24 January. See
A ISaction=retrieve&WAISdocID=5379713115+0+0 +0
http://www.azleg.state.az.us/cgi-bin/waisgate?W
NEWS FLASH: Republicans Prefer Life "The Way It Used To Be"
WASHINGTON DC - In a startling announcement, Republicans all around the country have stated a public desire for things to go back to the way they used to be. This announcement has shocked both political pundits and everyday citizens as the startling has news has spread like wildfire across the country.
Senator Strom Thurmond (R-SC), first elected to Congress in 1956 on a segregationist platform, concurs with his fellow Republican's viewpoints. "Nowadays, there's too much focus on affirmative action and gender equality, and not enough emphasis on restoration of American family values," the Senator said.
Reactions from other members of congress have ranged from mock-amusement to severe distress. "I'm totally blown out of the water by [Senator Thurmond's] viewpoints," Senator Patty Murray (D-WA) said. "I mean who would have thought that someone like Mr. Thurmond would have any desire to have America return to a more traditional way of life? Really, who knew?"
A push for a return to traditional values is being pushed by Republicans at all levels of government. Under a bill proposed this week by Republican Arizona State Rep. Jean McGrath, students at Arizona universities would be forbidden from allowing members of the opposite sex into their dorm rooms, which the Senator described as "sleeping-parlors", and would be forced to use filtering software on all Internet connected computers.
"I'm making these changes so that life at Arizona State University can go back to how it used to be when I attended classes there in the late 1950s," McGrath said at a press conference last week. "I am hopeful that with the help of my fellow Congressmen, we can turn back the clock thirty, perhaps even forty years," McGrath said. "After we've taken care of that, I'm planning on resigning my post as State Representative and returning to a life of cooking and cleaning for my alcoholic husband. It'll be nice to leave voting and thinking to the men for a change," the Senator said.
Apparently, McGrath is not alone in her convictions. "When I was a boy, soda was a nickel, gas used to be full service with a smile, and women used to be pretty and smell nice," 40 Million glaze-eyed Republicans chanted in monotoned unison last week. "Whatever happened to family values?" the collective group was heard to chant.
Now I realize that many hair-trigger free speech advocates read slashdot, but I think that the principle behind the bill makes sense in a number of ways. It makes even more sense if you consider the geek angle.
On the surface, having one-click access to porn in your room is different than having to go across the street to the gas station to buy a magazine. First difference: you don't have to pay to get access to internet porn (yes there are pay services, but we all know how much free stuff is out there). Second difference: you have an unlimited supply of porn on the internet. So in many ways the university is providing students with access to porn. If nothing else, this could fuel some addiction among those of little will power.
On a geek level, porn is a huge, huge bandwidth eater. It's based around huge image galleries and movies. Restricting access to such services, and also restricting, say, downloads of files larger than N megabytes (such as 120 MB game demos), is a good idea from a system administration point of view. It has nothing to do with freedom of speech.
"This is a dead Representative, it lives no-more, it is deceased, extant, without breath, it is an Ex-Representative". For Gawd sake, Monty, bury it before it stinks the place out.
Not necessarily. At one time:
Reading books was unregulated.
*Listening to* radio & TV was unregulated.
And they still are... publishing is different from reading content. Anybody know of any reasonable political party or person pushing net-licenses? I don't.
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
The senator is also considering restrictions on the use of electricity by students in the dorms.
Use of electric lighting shall be only for a "specific educational purpose".
She doesn't want students using electric lights, provided at public expense, for reading smutty, subversive books and magazines such as Time, Newsweek, Car & Driver and Playboy.
Why do people like Gene get elected? I can only assume she exploits the same techniques that Nazis and other radicals use to satisfy their lust for evil, in this case controlling the thoughts, relationships, and freedom of people. They always target the youth, they're the most exploitable, in the name of their own protection. It pisses me off because it makes me hate all moral people, which I really shouldn't, and generally I hope that an asteroid will settle the issue once and for all like some kind of Tool song. To get back on topic, sexual impulse at that age is as powerful as heroine addiction. Anyone who denies it is a liar or has hormone problems. Why are they trying to ban such a great outlet that basically keeps young males from going crazy? The reasons can only be dark and twisted like the moral cleansing that has always led to genocide throughout history.
If you are a college student like me then you can complain, I sure as hell don't. If you are a taxpayer then I have one thing to say.
You want your share back? I'm sure I have a buck or 20 around here... that's about all of YOUR dollars that go to the university. Me on the other hand.. I pay $20,000 a year to go to college so I think I have just a *little* more say about what should go on here then you do. I enjoy the bandwidth at my college because I PAID FOR IT.. a hell of a lot more than any one taxpayer.
For those of you who are interested in getting in contact with her, you can visit Jean McGrath's web page at http://www.azleg.state.az.us/members/jmcgrath.htm. An e-mail address and phone number are included on the page if you are interested in getting in touch with her and sharing your views.
No, thank goodness, that was Kansas. We Arizonans are proud that we can usually find one state that will do *something* so we won't be considered complete morons.
Just a dude. Stuck in IT.
So I can still bring my sister up to my room... sweet!
"If you can't keep it in your pants, keep it in the family."
- A.P.
--
"One World, one Web, one Program" - Microsoft promotional ad
"Remember when the U.S. had a drug problem, and then we declared a War On Drugs, and now you can't buy drugs anymore?"
PHOENIX-Under a bill proposed this week by Rep. Jean McGrath,
R-Glendale, students living in university residence halls would be
forced to work in labor camps every day, instead of attending class.
When asked to comment, Rep. McGrath told reporters, "Since college
students are such a burden on the state of Arizona, I thought we could
get some use out of them." When the reporter informed her that
students payed tuition to go to college, she replied "What? What is
tuition? We get nothing out of them when they just go to class
everyday. We have to put them to work."
As for her inspiration for the bill, McGrath sites attending college
in a Nazi Concentration Camp. She said when she was a student at
Aussenlager Langenstein-Zwieberge in the late 1940's, students had
"plenty of forced labor" outside of their dorm rooms, which she
described as "gas chambers." She also said gas chambers underwent a
"white glove" inspection each week, but now, no one cares how students
maintain the state's property.
--
I feel for you geeks in AZ.
This sig is false.
If I'm not mistaken, many, many people had sex in the Bible. It was not a sin. It was not bad to do. So why is it that so many people these days say that God or the Bible, or whatever, say that sex is bad, sex only with whom you are married to, etc? And besides, when did it become "bad" or "immoral" to get married to someone of your own gender? Marriage is the bond between two loved ones, right? By definition from Dictionary.com, marriage is a bonding between man and woman as husband and wife, OR wedlock... I find it weird that in a country of the free, for the people, by the people, there are so many things that are bad, immoral, wrong, etc... Why? What's worse, is most people who want to make a change, can't, because they're political minorities, and the people who want to push laws on others to make them do as how they see fit as "moral" and "right", won't want people who see otherwise in power. I hate it.
Actually I do get charged for network connectivity... I get charged $40 for the jack in my room and I get charged a "computer services" fee ALL computer usage, INCLUDING internet. We do have a RIGHT to internet, because we pay for the network connectivity of the college
Actually, no. Most foreigners see "the land of the free" as the sham it is. I don't look at the USA as free, I see it just as restrictive, if not worse, than *MANY* other countries. (I'm in Australia btw)
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
.. kinda makes me glad I don't live there...
(and dry heat my a$$.. anything warmer than 20 degrees celsius is simply unacceptable..)
Cheers,
Your Working Boy,
As a dane living in USA (in no-Darwin Kansas of all places) I get more and more scared about what I see:
The first small thing I see in this bill is the americans's general scare of "abuse of taxpayers' money". I see it on this university as well. The americans seem to want to pay 10$ to a beurocrat controlling that another public employee does not use 1$ for personal perposes. Besides spending the 10$ in the first place it also makes working climate intolerable and make everyone work less. Forinstance, if I used the university's copy machine to take a personal photocopy once in a while would probably cost the tax payers 1$ a month. But no, I have to bike downtown and pay for it myself. Lost time a month: probably a 1 hour or around 20$ worth of lost work. Plus, that I like the place less. Unfortunately this attitude is also gaining ground in Denmark.
Secondly, I see the really, really old fashioned, not even belonging to the last century but the 19th century, sex moral: "Oh, my daughter should not have sex yet she is not married!". Any person should ofcourse be allowed to think like that but make laws where you try to inforce upon everyone just demostrates one thing:
That in USA there is in reality no respect for individuals' personal freedom. It is all words and principles, but when it comes to practical laws and regulations the americans (in general?) are very happy about restricting the freedom of other peoples. Let me quote Rage Against the Machine (probably not a 100% correct qoute) "The land of freedom? Whoever told you that is your enemy."
as most of the job hunt takes place online, what are graduating seniors to do with this? Universities are supposed to help you get a job, right? That's why each college has a fully funded career program to connect you with people who are hiring, right?
So, what if I'm searching porno sites to find one that's hiring a webmaster? (...or a photographer? a programmer?)
What if I'm doing research on net porn? IRC? Hell, my 130-page senior thesis for my undergrad degree was written on conversation on the Internet, IRC comprising a large percentage of the research; and I've written numerous other papers on email, textual decoration, and speech acts on-line, using exmaples from every-day interaction in IRC, IM, email, web-chat rooms, etc.--some of which have been published, so they're not crap.
I mean, c'mon. Is the network going to pop up an alert dialog box on each log on, "Do you promise that your activities will be restricted to educational research and work? Y/N"
Returned Peace Corps IT Volunteer
If you have the money!! Buy a house or apartment near the campus, and sign up for cable or DSL. I'm sure that the market price of real estates over there will skyrocket soon...
Not to mention that you can also RENT the rooms!!
Call me a non-athletic nerd if you will, but what "specific educational purpose" do college sports serve? Besides providing the USA with semi-pro leagues and certain colleges and universities with a multimillion (or billion) dollar revenue stream, how do college sports further or promote learning?
Where do some people get the idea that college (or high school) students should be spending all their waking time "learning," if fact, that they are somehow obligated to do so? When you graduate, do you chain yourself to a job 24/7?
As for reestablishing single-sex dorms, well, you might as well try banning television on campus.
--
Zero tolerance equals zero intelligence
Net filters cost money!
another wildcat article
I can't really see the distinction between "educational" and "non-educational" use. Personally, I learned more about computers because I became addicted to my ATARI2600 in Jr. High and hung out at the video arcade at the mall too much (Missile Command, anyone?). These days, being a Quake playa is to the computing world what golf is to the medical profession. Sure, you don't *have* to do it, but you meet lots more folks if you do. Hard-core mudders sometimes pick up C just to make their own muds. I did. Before mudding, I had never programmed before.
GPB
In case politicians have forgotten, the people pay the taxes which, in turn, are used as federal dollars. And, on top of this, and I'm not exactly sure of tuition fees for Arizona universities, if I'm paying $50,000.00 a semester for school, hell, even a YEAR, I'd better be able to use my Internet access any way I choose. Now, in regards to students using their dorm rooms for "personal matters." This is just ridiculous. Again, the people attending these schools are paying not only taxes which helped fund the universities, but tuition or room/board fees. Thus, as long as you aren't participating in any illegal activities or disturbing other students, what's the problem? It sounds to me as if this woman is trying to reinstate "the good ole days" in Arizona, forcing her morals and values upon the residents and college students of Arizona. She says she's responding to "student concerns." Students go to politicians and say "You know, I'd really like it if you could decide what material I'm able to view on the Internet." or... "Yeah, Julie came into my room the other day. We almost had sex. So, you think you could make it against campus rules for opposite sexes to visit in dorm rooms?" Of course, that wouldn't stop anyone in a same sex relationship :)
If AZ does what this rep wants, the 'good ole days' of having to sneak into the dorms will return. The college that I went to (86-90) had all the men and women in separate dorms in which a member of the opposite sex had to be escorted in the building at all times and were not permitted after 10pm. In order to get to their room, the women had to go through three sets of locked doors that were always locked. The place was about like a fortress.
It didn't matter that much anyway. Since it was an engineering college, there were about 2x to 3x times as many men as women. Considering that there were more attractive girls in my high school class of 36 students than in my college freshman class, I'd say there wasn't that big of an urge to get in the dorm anyway. But for the ones that did, the main thing was to not make much noise to attract the attention of the RAs.
There was a reason the unofficial school motto was Sex Kills! Go to Tech and live forever!
the good ground has been paved over by suicidal maniacs
I have already had bills restrict my internet access. Especially if I go over the timelimit.
Opposite-sex visits have been pretty expensive too..
-- That which does not kill us has made its last mistake.
When will this ever stop? Never? I would assume that the majority of this readership would fall under the blanket of "Generation X". We are constantly assaulted for our candor and expression of views. We are the marked targets of every nut job left, right, and middle on the political spectrum. We are the first generation since the 20's to grow up without the wool pulled over our eyes. We see the world much as it and not how we are told it should be. The students of Arizona State had this coming to them just as we all do. Unless the students of Arizona State are somehow different than the rest of the country than about 5% of them voted in the last election. Which means the other 95% voted her in by not voting at all. I won't rant any more I will instead go and be heard.
32-20
A ISaction=retrieve&WAISdocID=5843315769+0+0 +0
http://www.azleg.state.az.us/cgi-bin/waisgate?W
Still, people seem to be missing the point. Colleges are NOT FREE. Internet access is NOT FREE. On top of tuition, I also pay a fee to get my T-1 in my dorm room. So quit saying it's their right because the state pays for everything. When the state pays for me to go to college, I'll quit bitching
Nazis gassed Jews. This silly woman just wants to limit internet porn. Are you aware of the difference?
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
In order for this to work, that means that the university has the right to regulate what you do with your private property (ie computer). If a university can do this they have the presedence to regulate what else we do with our private property, like tell us we can't put Free Kevin bumper stickers on our case, or on our backpacks, or a poster on the wall of a dorm room.
--Hephaestus_Lee
"[Y]our wise men don't know how it feels to be thick as a brick." -- Ian Anderson
This is clueless. Driving a car, flying a plane, broadcasting on public airwaves, and practicing law and medicine are regulated simply because they all have a direct impact on other people. In the case of driving, flying, or practicing medicine, that impact can be physically devastating to other people. In the case of broadcasting, regulation is required to let everyone have their very own frequency. And in the case of law, regulation is required to keep incompetent lawyers from ruining their clients' lives.
None of those have any resemblance to someone using the internet, or wanking over internet porn. Can you imagine needing a license to read books?
Do you have ESP?
> much as driving a car without a license is illegal.
Travelling is a RIGHT, Driving is a privilege. You DON'T need a license to travel.
I travel without one, and have yet to be given a ticket for speeding or for driving without a license.
Here is a list of DOCUMENTED rulings.
Driver Licensing vs. the Right to Travel
WHERE do the police get the jurisdiction to give you a ticket in the first place since the roads ARE PUBLIC!?
Probably because you don't have the Manufactor's Statement of Origin for your automobile:
Vehicle Manufacturer's Certificate/Statement of Origin
Manufacturer's Statement of Origin - Key To ownership
My automobile is NOT registered by the government, since it is MY property.
When you buy a new autmobile, WHY does the goverment want you to surrender the MSO?
Title transfer
Licensing your new vehicle in Washington
LOUISIANA OFFICE OF MOTOR VEHICLES VEHICLE REGISTRATION & TITLE
Massachusetts Title Law
Speeding is NOT a crime, UNLESS you went to the government asking for permission (DRIVER'S LICENSE) to use their property (REGISTERED VEHICLE.) Remember Speeding != reckless driving.
If you don't want to be harassed by the good law officers, you can get an International Driver's Permit, which is valid in over 200 countries. No Socialist Slave Number is required.
Research the above links and see for yourself.
Cheers
legislative phone#: (602) - 542 - 3255
2) These sections are all from article 2 of the Arizona Constitution:
Section 2. All political power is inherent in the people, and governments derive their just powers from the consent of the governed, and are established to protect and maintain individual rights.
I guess that, in Arizona, ADULT college students are not really individuals.
Section 8. No person shall be disturbed in his private affairs, or his home invaded, without authority of law.
I guess that, in Arizona, ADULT college students are not allowed to have any private affairs.
Section 13. No law shall be enacted granting to any citizen, class of citizens, or corporation other than municipal, privileges or immunities which, upon the same terms, shall not equally belong to all citizens or corporations.
If you grant to ADULT college students the privilege of being free from porn, you will have to grant it to every citizen of Arizona.
Section 25. No bill of attainder, ex-post-facto law, or law impairing the obligation of a contract, shall ever be enacted.
If I am not mistaken, these citizens have signed contracts with the University. Enacting these Know-Nothing laws that have been proposed would substantially impair these contracts.
Besides, I thought Republicans were for individual rights and freedom of thought and conscience and against government interference in the exercise of those rights. Am I wrong??
DNA is a Turing machine. You, however, being dynamic and emergent, are not.
No offense, but you obviously don't speak for "Most foreigners".
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
> Are you aware of the difference?
Godwin's and all that aside,
consider that the Nazis did many seemingly
innocuous things to limit the freedom of the
people under their government, long before they
started wholesale murder of entire classes and
races of people.
The reason people want to draw attention to the
small invasions and evaporations of our rights is
so that we won't be surprised by waking up in such a state where there is NO freedom to live, which is what happened to Germany. It did not happen overnight, but people chose to ignore the decades of warnings that were right in front of them.
Perhaps the actions of a relatively low person in government (the gov. of AZ) reflect a greater, much more threatening whole.
-fb Everything not expressly forbidden is now mandatory.
I can vote and enter into LEGAL contracts at 18. That defines being an adult (legally anyway). why are the drinking ages higher? I dunno, why do we even have them at all? I'd also like to know why you think Muslim laws are backwards? Perhaps because you are ignorant?
The Kansas state board of education decided that evolution would not be covered by the comprehensive state education tests. It was a administrative, not judicial, decision, and schools are still free to teach it, although that may vary with funding.
"If one is really a superior person, the fact is likely to leak out without too much assistance" -- John Andrew Holmes
the clothes you wear didn't really dictate the education.
I'm sure the army wouldn't win more wars if they can all dress the way they REALLY wanted to.
I think one of the biggest problem in America is that everyone overreacts on their "freedom of speech", on people "trampling on their rights", on the government "removing their freedom", so on so on. Obviously some cries are very much warranted (like DVD vs. MPAA for example), but most of them are just unjustified whining that equates to a kid "losing freedom" because he's not allowed to watch TV after 10 at night.
When people learn that not all restrictions and rules are oppression to our rights and freedom, maybe America's future will actually start turning around for the better.
Looks like Jean McGrath is having a Y2K problem - she thinks it's 1900.
--
Mod up a post Rob doesn't like and you'll never mod again
Why should i pay for the roads you travel on? Listen to Mr. Webster censorship - restriction on ideas prior to, or prosecution following, thier publication
Now tell me, what does blocking internet sites do? Does this proposal block ideas? Songs are certainly ideas, porn is too, remember when stuff like playboy was found protected under the Constitution? Now, according to the Bill of Rights, who DEFINATLY is not allowed to censor? Thats right, gov't. The reason you pay for education and college bandwidths is the same reason you pay for roads. We are all part of a society, and in order for a society to function it must work together. Get it? Good.
Sorry to contradict you, but one other, more important right based on age has lowered - the right to vote used to 21! Now it's 18. This seems to me to be a much more important right than buying (not drinking, as you stated) alcohol.
actually yes, its usually lumped under "Room and Board" if its not seperately charged.
The drinking age in Hungary is 18. America is the only country I know of where you can join the army (which, by the way, usually allows you to drink on base) and die for your country at 18, yet you cannot drink. We are lame.
You know what? We still have fun. There are still fun parties, people get an education, fall in love and get married, etc.
If you need alcohol/sex/porn to be happy, then you have some serious problems. Life is too short to waste on momentary pleasures. (and no, I'm not just some "chick" who can't "get some")
That said, I still must agree with the majority of slashdot readers in that such regulation is NOT under the jurisdiction of the government. While I think that our nation could use a stronger moral background, rules and regulations from the government are not the answer.
The section on restricting internet use to purely educational material is ridiculous. Not only could any material be construed as educational, but there is more to an education than simple calculus, physics, and literature.
-Qirien
-- Qirien, Academy of Defenestration
"Who do you want to defenestrate today?"
Hey, guess what? When I was in college, I paid for it too. The problem was, I didn't have a computer! I was stuck with everyone else with an insanely high phone bill because we had to use the same company that provided the ethernet "for free". So I got my consumer choice taken away so that the guys who could aford $100 ethernet cards (a specific model you had to buy from the campus computer store) could play networked DOOM and use hard drive sharing to maximize their porn supply. (no lie, just the only things I ever saw the system used for). With these conservative students protesting maybe 50 cents of their student activities fee going to an organization they don't agree with, why was I paying 20 dollars extra a month for my already richer fellows to enjoy faster access to recreational computing? They can bloody well move off campus and pay for it themselves!
ehem. So there's the perspective of a (former) student, not a current taxpayer. Hope it helped.
...will work for Chick tracts...
Sure, it was terrifying to think that you might hear her parent's car drive up at any second while you were otherwise occupied in the living room. Then again, it was exciting as well.
In fact, adding sneaking a member of the opposite sex into you dorm can be just as much fun. Of course, I wouldn't want to do it all the time, either.
----
Every year during my review, I just pray the words "slashdot.org" aren't mentioned.
Most schools charge a lot more for out of state students, and Arizona is not doing them selves any favors by annihilating their chances at recruiting and keeping students from other states - students who can just as well go to any other out of state university.
"Sig free in '03!"
The republicans only pass big (big for the rich, not the middle class) tax cuts when they're is a democrat in the white house. They know he'll veto it, but when they have a republican congress and President, they don't do it. Remember "Read my lips no new taxes"?
spoo
Have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?
If there is no option of making wrong choices, then it's not self control.
From the news report, particularly:
and it might be taken that there is some unusual problem.Is that actually the case? I would think it possible. Or is this merely a knee-jerk reaction that they've noticed some new way of "getting porn."
As compared to the consideration that students could use the US Mail service to send a subscription card to get a subscription to Playboy or potentially something "racier."
Actually, that suggests something comparable... I'd think that the institution is not permitted by US law to tamper with the mail. Considerable "games" could be played by using the mail service...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
But we aren't talking about FTP servers in the dorms. We're talking about web sites, the freedom to see what we want to see. Oh yeah, I'm spending too much time playing Quake. 1) Quake is ancient now. 2) That would explain a 3.8 GPA, wouldn't it? But now you're assuming that it's the parents' concern. I know 3 people here that were under 18 when they first got here, and all 3 were 18 within 3 months of their arrival. 18=adult=rights.
You obviously miss the news, which sees literally HUNDREDS of illegal immigrants arriving on Australia's shores every week. So many that we're running out of places to hold them while processing. Or that Australia has to knock back at least 80% of immigration applications?
Open Source. Closed Minds. We are Slashdot.
Today, I expect it costs the phone companies more to track and account for it than it costs for them to provide the service.
This doesn't stop them from sending you bills.
The parallel is quite clear: The "powers that be" care a whole lot more about control than they do about the economics of the matter.
The same is true for organizational attempts to block things like phone sex services. Some organizations have concluded that it is mandatory to block the stuff. I'd think it cheaper to handle it after the fact, permitting people to abuse it, but making this a firing offense.
There would be some losses resulting from people being stupid; these costs are not likely to be as high as the costs of setting up the pre-blocking system. A couple of other benefits come in:
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
As a recent graduate from the University of Arizona, I've heard of Jean McGrath before and I know not to give her any credence. She began making proposals like this last session and they got more attention in the media than they did on the house floor. In Tucson, she is generally considered a conservative nut with too much power over the public education system. Even the Arizona Daily Star, Tucson's morning newspaper, practically calls her a loony in supposedly "objective" reporting. When you hear her calling for "accurate and complete" course descriptions, you're hearing a nicer version of her call to have "Women's Studies" officially reclassified as "Lesbian Studies" because the texts aren't homophobic.
The problem here in Arizona is that there is a very active fundamentalist Christian voting block, especially in Mesa. We have a few other state legislators who many of us are rather embarrassed about. (On the other hand, I'm sure some of my state's legislators would be embarrassed about me.) Because of this, we have a state government that wants to legislate a very restrictive morality. However, there isn't nearly enough support for Jean McGrath's measures to pass. They'll be used by zealots as examples of the proper role of government and shot down by realists as examples of unnecessary and unwelcome government meddling.
As far as restricting students' internet access to class-related activities, I don't see how this could be feasible. Due to the sheer volume of it, there's no way to constantly monitor all students' net activity. They could do spot checks, but I don't think anyone would stand for getting a phone call every two weeks asking to explain how their visiting slashdot was related to their education. There would definitely be some privacy issues involved there as well. What I know the university does do is make periodic port scans for unauthorized servers (http, ftp, WINS and such) on the residential network. I'm sure they can also detect a student using an exorbitant amount of bandwidth. If there were concerns about a few individual students using excessive bandwidth to download porn, I could understand how an acceptable use policy might be used to reign them in. After all, bandwidth does cost money. However, there is no justification for universities to practice the kind of extensive monitoring Ms. McGrath would like to see. Filtering software would also be totally unacceptable because it's costly and quite fallible. The cost of installing (and administering) filtering software is far greater than the cost of the bandwidth it would save.
This isn't to say that Jean McGrath's proposals don't disturb me. I find them very disturbing. But the underlying problem here isn't a lack of reaction to kill this. It's a lack of pro-action to keep this from ever coming up. This is someone who was voted into office by a small but vocal constituency. Although a large vocal constituency will continue to kill the most extreme and offensive measures, they'll just keep coming up again until people like Jean McGrath are voted out of office.
When they took the fourth amendment, I was quiet because I didn't deal drugs.
When they took the sixth amendment, I was quiet because I was innocent.
When they took the second amendment, I was quiet because I didn't own a gun.
Now they've taken the first amendment, and I can say nothing about it.
Evil.
I don't use the word much, in fact, pretty much not at all.
But then I saw this quote:
McGrath responded to this scenario: a student uses a campus Internet connection to decide which political candidates to support. That person is misusing university equipment, she said, just as if she used her legislative office phone to make long-distance personal phone calls.
On the surface, this is just plain stupidity: She doesn't live in her office, whereas students live on campus. The fact that students--not just the state, but students are actually taking money and paying for housing gives them some modicum of personal privacy that you don't really get when you have a home you can go over to after you're done with work.
But this is something more.
Any politician that would intentionally attempt to quell political discourse on the basis of inappropriate usage of government resources deserves all the wrath that an educated populace can bring to bear. Beyond the sexism and agism--which in and of itself is grotesque beyond description--is the presumption that the ability to learn and understand the policies behind the hype is not a right but a priveledge; not even a duty as a concerned American but a hindrance upon its social stability.
Many have attacked the young as a means to win over the old; any damages that generational warfare might create are quelled by the fact that one wins more blocs from the old than even exist in the young. But this is beyond that. Every American, young and old, should look towards Mrs. McGrath as a symbol of total corruption--not from outside, mind you, but from deep within. For anyone who can believe that political discourse is something which much be controlled and quelled like just another hormonally induced phase has truly lost every last shred of respectability and honor as any kind of leader, and any lemmings that would accompany her sadly deserve whatever fate they may receive.
I will donate $20 to whoever runs against her in the next election.
Yours Truly,
Dan Kaminsky
DoxPara Research
http://www.doxpara.com
Do you need a license to talk on the phone? Read a newspaper? Buy something from a swap meet? Come on, it ain't the same thing.
spoo
In my school you were assigned a roommate freshman year and had to pick someone sophomore year (no singles, or living off campus till you were a junior). But there really weren't any restrictions on overnight guests (not even a sign-in). The result was that if you were stuck with an inconsiderate roommate who happened to hook up well, you were regularly "sexiled" to a friend's futon or the library while the room you paid just as much board on was used as a love nest.
yeah, there are ways of dealing with this, depending on how good your relationship is (or needs to be) with your roomie. But guidelines (not bans) on overnight guests of any gender make a little more sense when you consider that one invites, but two must deal.
-Kahuna Burger
...will work for Chick tracts...
Hmmm... seems to me the issue of restricting Internet access would be unconstitutional. For the same reason that people have challenged the constitutionality of restricting access at public libraries. The people who can afford to go to private schools or out of state get the privilege of full Internet access, while those at the state schools don't. I'd be surprised if the law held up in court.
Cliff is running the protests:
sailist@asu.edu
http://www.studentadvocacy.org
http://www.asu.edu/studentprgms/orgs/pec/
And, the meeting is on Tuesday Jan 25 - Best Hall C114 - 6:30-8:00
-- Ender, Duke_of_URL
If you pulled this kind of legislative crap on college students in, say, Boston, it would be unconstitutional on the grounds of "cruel and unusal punishment." But not in Arizona.
I used to live in Tucson so I know. At night in Arizona, the weather is almost always delightfully comfortable, there aren't swarms of bugs that come out at sunset to drive you nuts like here in Florida, and just a few miles out of town there is all the seclusion you could ever want, so the college "kids" can just grab a blanket and a bottle of wine, drive out into the desert, and fuck on a dune under the stars. I can tell you for damn sure that that's lots better than making it in some cramped dorm room.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
As Thomas Jefferson told us, "The price of freedom is eternal vigilance." Overquoted, but none the less true. But most people don't care. Their freedoms are being taken from them silently, while they are too wrapped up in day to day life to notice the persistant, gradual changes.
So how do you get them to notice they are being stripped of freedom? You project the current trend into the future--show them an exageration of what it could be like if they don't take a stand for themselves (by making changes in their state government in this case). Hopefully it will scare them. If juvenile rants help wake up even one college student, to convince him or her to start making changes now, then I am not going to keep my mouth shut because someone wants me to be sentimental about their past or wants me to hold their experience as something sacred. It isn't worth it.
This sig is false.
Driving badly:
Can kill people
Flying badly:
Can kill people
Unregulated radio and tv can lead to confusion over legitimate source, which can lead to panics, which:
Can kill people
Practicing law under false pretenses:
Can ruin a defendant's life
Practicing medicine with incompetence:
Can kill people
Looking at pr0n:
ain't nothin wrong with that..
If they made it so anybody found bringing a member of the opposite sex into their dorm room would face instant expulsion from the dorm and suspension or expulsion from college, and that any staff wilfully collaborating in the breaking of this law (i.e., not enforcing it) would face disciplinary actions, it could be made workable, in a fascistic sort of way. All they'd need to do is to make an example of one or two offenders and the rest would fall in line pretty quickly.
If they were not at college they would be working a job. How the fsck can the college not allow the opposite sex in their rooms and censor the internet as they see fit. Is this some kind of joke?
The primary indication of this, McGrath said, is the high number of students dropping out after their freshman year.
The way I understand it, educational programs at large state schools tend to have large dropout rates because they have a "weeding out" process. Ever heard of this quote being given at a freshman orientation assembly? "Look to your left. Look to your right. Between those two people and yourself, only one will be here next year." State schools tend to have low admission requirements, which allows anyone who wants to have a go at it the chance. However, if they were to allow all these people to continue on all four years, the quality of their programs would suffer. Hence the weeding out - only the people who really are willing to make the effort necessary to succeed get through it.
And I'll bet it was worse back when Ms. McGrath was there.
bp
woxy.com - Bam! The Future of Rock and Roll
This is possibly the single saddest example of legislative incompetance that I have ever seen. An elected official describing using the internet to learn about politics as an abuse of taxpayer dollars? What about all those silly direct mail surveys and bullitens that elected officials running for office send out to their constituants postage free because of the frankage privilage? I know that I learn a lot more about politics from the internet than I do from those. This person is fighting the single best, most legitimate use for the internet in the name of something silly about taxpayer dollars only going for what is on a syllibus. If all you learn in college is what is on that little white sheet they pass out in the first week of Psych 101, you will be a waste of taxpayer dollars for the rest of your life, not just while you're in school.
I agree.
Think about this:
University dorms cost more to live in than rent in an apartment (in 95 I paid $1000/sem to share a dorm room, and the next year I paid half of $450/mo+phone,electric for a 2 br apt.) I fail to see how $500/mo for ONE ROOM has to be subsidized by taxpayers money.
And don't the students pay a technology fee? They started charging us $450/semester for some sort of technology fee. If the AZ students are paying one, then again, I fail to see how it's being subsidized by taxpayers' money.
College students are adults. They can walk down to the porn shop and buy themselves a playboy. They LIVE in the dorm room, and if they didn't, they'd be old enough to get themselves an apartment where they don't HAVE opposite sex rules. This ain't the '50s anymore. This ain't a Mormon (or ) college.
Even without the rules, students would still flunk out, they can find other things to waste their time with, or even buy a freakin dial up account for $12 a month to download their porn with.
Before you go blathering like that, go look at either Dubya's proposal for a tax cut or even worse, little Stevie Forbes's proposal. Dubya's plan gives 60 percent of the tax cut to the top ten percent of incomes, as though that income category needs further aggrandisement. Forbes's proposal goes further to abolish capital gains taxes altogether.
Forbes inherited four hundred million dollars from his dad. (The senior Forbes, incidentally, was fond of hanging out in gay biker bars. By way of gratitude for this inheritance, Forbes Jr. publicly abuses gays and favors legislation to deprive them of their civil rights.) Forbes Jr.'s inheritance means that by simply investing his fortune in something as mindless as Dow Jones index funds, he has a risk-and-work-free income of at least forty million dollars a year - with the stock bubble of the last few years, make that a hundred million a year. Well, according to Forbes's so-called "flat tax" proposal, the median wage earner will pay several thousand dollars in Federal taxes on the ~$45K income for which he works two thousand hours a year. And what shall little Stevie pay on his absolutely effortless $100M/year? Zero.
This is what Republicans call "fair tax reform," and since you're too lazy to look at the details closely, you obviously think it's a swell idea. Multimillionaires and billionaires, who do examine those details in detail, think these "reforms" are just wonderful, like Christmas in April, of course.
And to think I used to believe that /.ers habitually practiced arithmetic.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
Lucky you... only $40? At my school, we pay $250 a year for a connection in our room... and oh, if you have more than one computer connected (like a few of my other nerd friends), you pay that for EACH computer. I definitely think this means we have a right to look at whatever we want on the internet, no matter what the school thinks.
Have you read the Moderation Guidelines Addendum?
A number of my frinds from highschool have ended up dropping out and coming home to work or go to a local CC rather than a big state school, not because they are stupid but because they do not have the motivation necesary to go into a four year program at a major university. They were tired of it and ready to quit by junior or senior year in HS, and slapping "University" on the name of their school is not going to change that.
Realizing that education really is a pipeline to success, I do think that we should encourage people to go to college. I am not mandating testing to decide who becomes a Morlock and whoe becomes the Eloi, but I think schools need to ditch the idea that absolutely everyone needs to go to college. There are any number of perfectly good people who don't want or need to go to college, or who aren't capable of keeping up with the work and requirements. Yeah, some people do party too hard their freshman year and that is what knocks them out of school, but I know personally people that has happened to, and it is as much because they didn't want to be there as it was that they just couldn't help themselves and needed government attention.
Reminds me of a quote from Neil Gaiman's The Sandman. I can't remember the quote exactly, but here's a rough paraphrase: "The idiot may point out that the Emperor has no clothes. But the idiot remains an idiot, and the Emperor remains an Emperor."
The point: uniforms may cover up a symbol, but they don't solve the problem behind it. It seems that, anymore, kids are being raised with a basic lack of respect for anyone or anything, the most important lack of respect being for each other. No uniforms will cover that problem up; only education will. Uniforms are a mere quick-fix.
Now, you ask why it's acceptable when grownups in various professions wear uniforms? Here are a few examples:
Those are just a few examples. And the point is, they all serve some purpose. School uniforms are nothing more than pretentious cover-ups for the real problems facing our schools and children today. I came from a high school with such a dress code, so I know what uniforms do and don't do. I've seen administrators use them as tools to manipulate the students. I saw one director who used them as an excuse to basically ogle and grope students, male and female alike (thankfully he didn't last long).
Never once did I see uniforms stop anyone from ostracizing anyone else. They never stopped any fights, nor did they prevent any other kind of rule infractions. They didn't increase school spirit at all; if anything they lowered it. On the few days when the dress codes were relaxed, no one seemed to extol the "convenience" of uniforms; everyone dressed as themselves, and you know what? There was no evidence of the "fashion-slavery" uniform advocates claim happens when uniforms aren't present (that bit about "the kids all wear uniforms now anyway" is complete and total crap, and don't let anyone tell you otherwise).
All the uniforms did was feed the school's ego. That's all school uniforms ever do. They suppres the individual in the very enviornment that's supposed to teach students to live, do, and think for themselves.
Here in Ontario drinking age is 19, but me being 18 and living half an hours drive from Quebec, where drinking age is 18, I'm happy. :-)
The major three schools, NAU (Flagstaff), ASU (Tempe/Phoenix), and UA (Tucson) all use government funds to provide the college services to the citizens. As such, isn't this plan of *requiring* pornography filters on dorm-room TCP/IP akin to many of the public library debates being held around the country, including around the West Michigan area, home to SlashDot?
The US Constitution First Amendment says the government cannot be a censor, the Constitution itself says Fed trumps State in areas that overlap, and States are trying to override/ignore the US First Amendment with "exceptions" like this. Is this a fair summary?
As such, what other 'unconstitutional' cases are useful precedent? "Single-sex" state-sponsored schools have been forced to close or become coed, with mixed results.
The 'grass-roots' approach of painting the elephant pink is good, as well. Someone mentioned calling this legislation the "Gay College Privacy Act," since it forbids hetero-gender visitation to dorm-rooms. I think the poster was kidding, and so did the people giving it +5 Funny moderation, but it's not a lousy approach. I'm certain it's one that's been done before for other causes, anyone with examples?
Arizona is an Initiative, Recall and Referendum state. It adds a *lot* of confusion, but it also adds some good checks-and-balances... Ex-Gov. Ed Mecham revoked the controversially-created State Paid Holiday for Martin Luther King, Jr. on his first day; this was one of the things that caused his recall election (vote of no-confidence and ouster of an official) to succeed. Referendum is a vote of no-confidence on a passed Initiative. Is calling a Referendum on non-Initiative Legislature also possible in Arizona, I'm rusty?
[
It's gonna take hundreds of international treaties to even begin regulating the internet. How long does ONE treaty usually take?
You should notice then that your bandwidth is barly utilized. If you don't awnt to download porn with it then don't. Other people are paying as well, and if they want to they should be able to do so. porn is part of free speech, it was ruled so by the Supreme Court. Internet porn is the same as paper/video porn...just a new media for it. YOu need the clue.
Lets get the damn telephones out of there too!
Frankly, I'm disappointed at the weak bill "Ms." McGrath has offered. It's just leftist tripe that panders to the special-interest student lobby. Here's what goes unsaid in her bill:
* Libraries
Libraries are precious, taxpayer-funded resources. Yet any day of the week you'll find people taking off the shelf any book that strikes their fancy, whether assigned or related to a class or not. They'll sit their smug, I-love-to-read butts down in one of the limited chairs available -- a chair which should be reserved for students performing actual classwork -- and read just as long as they want, at the state's expense!
* Unsanctioned Discussions
Students go to college to learn their coursework. In that light, friendly discussions about assigned work can be educational (as long as said discussions do not degenerate into cricitisms of the faculty or administration). But there are still students who spend some of their time discussing concepts NOT RELATED to their assigned courses!
Not only is this a misuse of public resources (time, opportunity cost, available seating, heat, oxygen), but such students often take advantage of more innocent students who don't know, on their own, what is worth discussing. That's why we have courses and assigned work. If the people of Arizona wanted their money to be spent so that students could talk about Archaeology (non-Greek) or Urban Planning, then arizona.edu would have departments for them. It doesn't, which means those know-it-alls should stick to their program or keep their mouths shut. Of course, they always have two other options as well: transfer to another school, or go back to Russia!
What if a student hears about some new molecule, such as fullerene or cubane, and is interested? In such a case, the student should trust that the appropriate department (Chemistry) will examine the issue in due time, and if the subject matter warrants creation of a class, said student will be free to take such class (providing student is still enrolled at the time, and is a Chemistry major with required minimum GPA). Meanwhile, it is in the Chemistry Department's scope to examine the topic, NOT the student's.
* No Punishments?
Suppose "Ms." McGrath's bill passes and yet some student still uses the Internet without a specific educational purpose, what then? While some people might want to give a warning first, I say the law is the warning, and you need a zero-tolerance policy. That student is stealing taxpayer resources. First, the student must be fired; any pension or 401K contributions for that semester must be forfeited, as well. Then, the state's District Attorney should be notified of the theft. Anything less is just coddling young brutes who have no understanding of civilized behavior.
OK, first of all let me stress the fact that I think the events that took place in Kansas were absolutely ridiculous.
Having said that, let me also point out that if you are going to complain about those events, you should try to be accurate. Kansas did not ban the teaching of evolution, nor did Kansas require the teaching of creationism. What Kansas did do is REMOVE the requirement for teaching evolution and offer the individual school districts the ability to decide which theory would be a part of their cirriculum.
Now, I'm all for freedom and government non-interference, but this really annoys me. Evolution is science, and therefore belongs in the public schools. Creationism is religion, and therefore belongs in the church. I have no intention of belittling anyone's beliefs, but let's be sane here. Keep each theory in the appropriate forum.
She looks like James Watt in drag! Blech! >_
Excuse me, I think I'm having a buffer overflow!
Urp!
I thought I lived in America.
What part of "Adults" don't you understand? Opposite sex visitation? Please 18-24 is typical age of college student. These are ADULTS. Filters for the net? Lets see. Limit information access to COLLEGE students. ADULT college students. If we are going to do this right, lets start by limiting Pokeman from daycare kids too. Fuck Republicans.
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No one here thinks anymore. "Oh the tax cuts are just for the rich". They make more, they pay more.
Only the State obtains its revenue by coercion. - Murray Rothbard
jmcgrath@azleg.state.az.us
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My rep is a total dip sh it. I'm glad he didn't get my vote! Hmmmm.... maybe I should have voted. :)
-neosensa-
glendale, az
Uhmmm... I would think that since I'm kinda renting this property, that my privacy would be somewhat respected. I can understand occasional checks for fire hazards (a fire in a dorm full of dumbass stoned and drunk college kids is a BAD thing, after all) and the like, but not for booze and drugs and such.
After all, that's the job of the police :)
She describes the atmosphere at Arizona universities as "not conducive to learning." The primary indication of this, McGrath said, is the high number of students dropping out after their freshman year.
Hey lady, the reason you see a lot of freshman dropping out is because most of them are (to be frank) dumb as shit.
They're the ones who have been penned up their entire life by their overprotective parents who have been trying to protect them from society. Then you let these kids loose, and they don't know how to react.
Sometimes, less is more.
Notice also how she just mentions freshman. Thats because once you get rid of the people who frankly shouldn't be going to college, you've got the (relatively) stable and intelligent upper-classmen. These are the ones who understood what it takes to succeed in college, and the ones who knew what was right as opposed to letting constrictive laws protect them.
The other proposals would require Arizona universities to install or subscribe to Internet filters on all campus computers..."
What about the linux users? NetNanny for linux?
Didn't think so.
"...allow students to use campus Internet connections only for a "specific educational purpose..."
She said when she was a student at Arizona State University in the late 1950s, students had "lots of places to meet" outside of their dorm rooms...
Like the woods, the theater, under the bridge, the backseat of a volkswagen, any dark corner...
As much of a wiseass as I've been in this post, I'm trying to make a point here... how does sheltering students from the evils of porn (no more nude drawing courses or picasso paintings) actually help them? Last time I checked, most college age students (myself included) have raging hormones. And instead of risking getting some infernal STD (such as AIDS, the clap, or children), I look at porn and... erm, spank the pud. Thus, I don't think with my John Thomas as often, along with preventing other afforementioned problems.
Of course, we could just get rid of the problem altogether and just make all-men's and all-womens colleges... riiight.
I think colleges are fine as they are. I'm looking forward to my sophomore year. Hopefully by then, I won't have to deal with as many idiots.
Hopefully.
Zack Adgie
---------------------------
A wise man speaks because he has something to say.
A foolish man speaks because he has to say something.
____________________________
What did the Buddhist say to the hot dog vendor?
"Make me one with everything."
My parents live right near Carleton University which, for a while, was known in Canada as Last Chance U. They had the self-serving policy that they'd not allow tuition refunds after midterms, with the salutory result that they'd get to keep tuition from any students that didn't drop out before having any grading feedback.
I guess that the situation in Arizona begs the question of whether or not they were having worse "weeding out" than usual. If not, then the claim that they need to "clean up" because of bad academic results is just dishonest.
It doesn't make the "porn-meisters" a good thing; it says is that things haven't changed much. Ten years ago, back when IRC didn't exist, I had an "office mate" in grad school who was into Relay, and the "groups" he was into back then were at least as sleazy as anything we'd see now. He didn't get invited to very many parties, suffice it to say...
If you're not part of the solution, you're part of the precipitate.
Amen!
Well, we coulds probably beat each other over the head with statistics all night...here's another one: the top 10% of incomes pay WELL over 50% of all taxes. So why shouldn't they see more of the benefits, they pay alot more already.
What I am more concerned about is the notion that if something benefits one group more that it benefits another group (even though they both benefit) that it is bad! Simple question: what if we made a level 15% flat tax on everyone. EVERYONE will pay less money, but the higher income people will drop from the mid 30% range, while lower income families will drop from mid 20% range. Is that unfair to lower income families? Of course not! They pay less because they make less, ok? And before you give me this argument that 15% is more important to lower income families than wealthier families then I just have to say 15% is important to everyone, plus that's one of the benefits of earning and keeping wealth. I don't give a rat's ass if Steve Forbes doesn't work a day in his life, it doesn't affect me; he is reaping the rewards of his father's hard work and that is what the country is all about, more power to him. Why should your happiness in getting a tax cut dependent on the fact that someone else doesn't get as much as you? why should your happiness be dependent on making sure someone else doesn't have an easier life than you? Live your life and don't worry about what Steve Forbes pays in taxes.
And I am sure that you have the EXACT same beliefs as your father.
It's sort of like charging for printing or instituting quotas in computer labs. Many colleges and universities look at different packages to curtail the excessive printing in their labs. Most of the time they find that paper and toner are cheaper those systems and don't create the ill will that a malfunctioning payment system can create.
Environmental concerns could lead to implementing them anyway, regardless of cost but big recycling bins next to the printers seems to be good enough for most people.
The best system in an attended lab is to put the printers by the labbie's desk and have them scold people who print excessively.
I remember when my state tried to pass rules similiar to this, and had to be reminded that they were trying to pass unconstitutional restrictions on the rights of the citizenry. Sometimes lawmakers and faculty forget that most of the students at Universities are not minors. And as such, they have certain inalienable rights.
It never ceases to amaze me that alot of lawmakers seem to forget this fact and stumble head long into a totalitarian attempt to take those rights away.
--
Python
Python
I think you are missing the point. Read the article! They are not talking about cencoring porn and mp3, they are censoring anything which is not directly related to a school project. Personally, I feel my education is enhanced by reading slashdot, which Im sure would not be a direct link to most if any of my school projects.
Perhapse this will help. It's part belief, part practicality, and all perception and politics.
Higher Education is not a right, and states have the right and responsibility to determine who attends their University. Character and conduct are valid criteria for admision and continuance. When you live off the public, you have to please them. States are also legally responsible for the students they house, and co-ed dorms are a place where women can get raped. Think you've heard all of this before? Let me say it another way:
People who attend State Universities are as finacially independent as welfare momas, and the working world can get upset thinking that their money is funding one big party for their future boss. Really! Think truck drivers pay fuel taxes so that you can fuck off your homework with porn, pot, skirt chasing, and other nefarious activity? Nope! Don't srew the pooch!
Let's get real people, there was once a time when you could expect college graduates to be ladies and gentelmen. Full of balls, sure but not stupid or common. Looking around here, I see plenty of whining about rights to stuff that would even embarass Bill Clinton. Too big to be told what to do? Fine, go make your own way and do it on your own property! It's a free world, and you don't need higher education to live. The choice is always yours, live by the rules or by your own means.
Now for the rape bit. My wife spent her 4 years in a women's dorm and told me why she liked it. At first, she just liked the privacy during non visitation hours. Later she came to like the fact that no men were alowed to walk around unescorted by their date. Reputable men did not hang around the women's dorm anyway, and the rules made sure that she would not be bothered by anyone less than reputable. It was safe, and she felt secure and unpressured there. I'm tired of writing now, flame away!
Remember, please, that this is Arizona we're talking about. It's soooo warm, and the sky is soooo beautiful, that sex is better outdoors anyway. If this bill encourages people to get over their ridiculous prudish hangups about being seen while having sex, I'm all for it! And hey, if they can't download porn, maybe they'll spend more time with real people. After all, it is a team sport.
"The biggest problem with communication is the illusion that it has taken place."
Ok here is the the emaill address of Rep McGrath
jmcgrath@azleg.state.az.us
Here is what I sent her, why not send her a letter and enlighten her as to her big political mistake.
Here is what I sent:
Dear Rep McGrath
Please refrain from the type of unresearched poorly thought out legislation like your
University Bill.
It is bad enough that anyone living outside of Arizona with an IQ above 80, thinks
our state government is a joke; But bills like this, that only add tax dollars and no
value to education, just reinforce their beliefs.
I would suggest that you try spending more time at some open minded web sites,
and do your own home work before, deciding how some one else should do theirs.
I have listed just a few of the issues you bring up with your piece of legislation
The reasons are as follows:
1. No matter how you try to filter out info some of the students will get around it
causing an expensive Tech race between the students and the IT staff.
(IT = Information Technology)
2. No matter how you choose to filter out Information you will always filter out
legitimate research Information.
3. The US Constitution does guarantee the freedom of speech, and it would look
real bad in an election year for your bill to get passed, just to be thrown out in court.
4. The people you are trying to control by restricting access are for the most part
over 18, and able to make their own choices, and learn from their mistakes.
5. The Universities are only partly funded by the the state and most of their revenue
is generated in the private sector, as well as in tuition, fees, research grants. there
fore it is not the states responsibility to become the Students baby-sitter.
Squandering what few dollars the Universities gets to enforce laws that can not be enforced reasonably.
P.S.
I think it was the Kilngons who said nuts we are surounded, so many enemys and so little time to enjoy killing them.
TeTalon
You are either a part of the problem, or a part of the solution, which are you.
Represenitive McGrath,
I am writing to inform you of my opinion of your Internet Censorship and Visitation Bill. As a voter who resides in your area (Peoria, AZ) I felt the need to inform you of my opinion. I am currently employed in the private sector as an Information System Analyst. My specialty is networking, email, and other Internet services. While I commend your desire to aid our young adults, I do not feel that it would be technically possible without GREAT cost and administrative burden to these schools. Current filtering software is a poor solution at best, it will either restrict so much that it renders effective use of the system impossible, or it will increase costs and hassle while still failing to achive its desired result. Major tech based companies who truly have a right to define the use of their networks and have the staff to implement such technology time and again choose not to because of both costs and ineffectiveness. I also do not believe it is the responsibility of the State or ANY Governmental body to determine what an adult is allowed to see. When a Government suppresses ANY information it is CENSORSHIP. These are not brothels and drug dealers, but adults in their own homes. The fact also remains that a student's tuition is meant to pay for classes and resources at the college. Perhaps if money is the issue, better management and accountability within these state programs can be instituted, not more administration costs and laws. As a father of 2 (soon to be 3) young children, I can understand the problems that we are faced with in schools today. But, it is not the place of government to place such moral standards on adults, as these are no longer 'children'. As a parent, I hope to raise my children as responsible members of society. The values that I hold will be offered to them, not those mandated by the State. It is my hope that they would adopt them, but I also believe in their right to exercise their personal freedoms if they wish, understanding the consequences. Where and when adults can meet is one of these basic rights. I served many years faithfully in our Armed Services to defend, with my life if necessary, this and other rights for my children. It saddens me when I see these precious rights taken so lightly. It is my challenge to you to 'Defend these Rights' for this coming generation by allowing them to grow and learn in an open society that fosters creativity and understanding. There are more effective ways to teach than with censorship and intolerance. Again, thank you for your time and attention to this matter.
Sincerely,
Douglas
-- Now where did I leave that sig? It's around here somewhere
All i've been hearing is how uniforms work in the army and how the schools should adopt unifors because of this reason. I would like to point out that school is NOT the army!! There is a major difference between the two. The army is a volentary way you choose to serve your country, you are volenteering to wear the uniform and assume a rank. Schools on the other hand are manditory, you do not volenteer to go to school, it is required of you. This whole thing is not a question of "rights", that's just to get more people arguing, the argument is realy about the people in power abusing their power so that they feel stronger. The use of the "army" argument is just an excuse to draw your attention away from the real problems.
"Ye who would cross the sea of fait must answer me these questions twenty-eight"
I've got a much better idea: Take back our political process.
Our representitives are only as good as the people who put them there. And right now, there aren't a whole lot of us putting them there or voting them out. Voter turnout is appallingly low. Lots of people like to complain about the government, but if they aren't voting, they're part of the problem, not the solution.
What do we have to do? We have to take back our political parties. from the huge PAC's, special interests, and businesses who buy influence with huge contributions. When you having a large, motivated, well informed voting public, money becomes moot.
Of course there are always going to be people who are motivated by certain issues. It can be quite difficult to get to the truth through all the spin and counter-spin. The signal-to-noise ratio is quite bad in that respect.
What does this mean to us? We're just a bunch of geeks bitching on the net, right? Wrong. We can be a whole lot more then that. We can be the center of an information revolution. We already are. It's time to apply the power of new medium to the political process.
I don't have the skills to pull it off, but I know that many who read Slashdot do. What I would like to see is a website that is dedicated to exposing the political records of politicians, showing where they stand on issues, etc. I envision a system where you can look up a politician by name, and see where they stand on issue, as well as choose issues, and see who stands where on those issues.
Are we tired of the direction America is going? Then lets really do something about it. Let's throw out the assnine bums.
If we really wanted to, we *COULD* influence the presidential election this year, as well as many other elections.
It's time to rock this boat. Who wants to be an iceburg?
--
Intelligence is definitely a recessive trait.
Ok, if I was still a dorm dweller I would be like "oh fuck that. Over my dead nic you 'Net-communist bastards".
Now with said, Universities uphold a sense of free speece. Whatever you want to say, you can say. Whatever you want to search for, you can search for. Filtering campus 'Net connectivity would damn sure not fly with either the students, sysadmins (like myself), or instructors. Hell that inhibits an instructor's ability to teach! If they can't teach what they need to teach, than what good is college in the first place?! (milk and cookie bashes aside). Whoever the hell came up with this probably read about "filtering" in a Popular Science or the "Internet for Fscking Idiots" and thought they'd toss the word around a bit to make it sound like they're not totally stupid. This would be similar to Dilbert and his boss with the tech buzz words. Idiots!
be ready to fight for your internet rights. that day will come!
I must be crazy but I thought that colleges were supposed to make one diverse and stimulate multiculturalism? Am I crazy in believing that college is one's most social time of there life? How can one be social when he cannot interact with a woman or a man? All we are going to spur is gender problems down the road when we geeks have never interacted with the girl across campus. Isn't he/she more likely to resort to pornography and off color gender remarks if he/she never interacts with opposite sex? What is this senator (I choke when I call him senator) thinking?
This just makes my firewall at work seem evil. The next thing you know, women will have to take lunch at 11:30am and men at 12:30pm so we never see each other.
Just damn crazy!
"Some mornings, it's just not worth chewing through the leather straps." ~ Emo Phillips
In reference to the other bills this person has come up with... I thought a university was where your mind was opened to new ideas, not closed. Why do we have to fight the same battles over and over again. Remember freedom of the PRESS? The only thing that has changed is the method and the speed, not the content. What's next, censoring the theories of Darwin? Having access to porn is _not_ the samw as hosting a porn site. Sounds like someone is trying to enforce a moral code, not a ethical one. Besides students also put down serious money to go to college. does'nt that buy them some rights as far as the 'college equipment' I look at it as a rental/lease of resources while I am getting an education.
make Linux, not Microsoft. sin(beast) = -0.809016994374947424102293417182819
Some of her past accomplishments include bills to exempt the state from the global phaseout of CFC refrigerants, and an effort to reduce the elk population in the mountains, citing the hazard to motorists. (NB: No fatalities on the books for elk/car collision, but dozens involving cattle. But McGrath said the elk ate all the grass, forcing the cows to go looking....)
I haven't checked yet, but she may also be a cosponsor for colleague Karen Johnson's latest push to require the teaching of creationism in the public schools.
In a state where the Wild West mentality still pervades far too much of public life, the government is a real dog and pony show. Out of the last four governors, one was impeached and another left office under the cloud of an ugly S&L scandal.
There are many of us who would like to pay a realistic salary for our lawmakers (currently they get 15K plus a per diem for those from the remote counties), in the hopes of attracting at least a few capable of rational thought.
In other news, astrophysicists have announced that they now know what all that dark matter is: it's stupidity.
I go to the world's larges Baptist University (can you say "full tuition paid scholarship") and it's not that bad even here. True, no opposite sex in dorms except for a few hours on the weekend, but I live at home so that doesn't really matter. The point being, even at one of the most conservative schools in Texas, there's no internet filtering. God help us all if this precedent is set that tramples on the rights of adults, just because they're less than 25 years of age. As if colleg students don't put up with enough crap. Can you think of one other institution where the employees (professors) get all the power and the priveleges, and the consumers (the students) get their rights trampled? Now they're trying to take away the right to use computer networks for personal business.
I'm not saying people need to buy into an extremist position on the subject. I'm simply advocating that the separate theories on the issues be presented in their appropriate forums until such a time as we understand the truth more fully.
And I fully agree with you point that the two theories can be reconciled. All you really need to do is open yourself to the idea that parts of the Bible should be interpreted figuratively instead of literally, and science and religion begin to fit together quite nicely for the most part.
I live in Arizona where I'm pursuing a degree in computer science from Arizona State. The fact that this woman thinks she has the right to come along and try to dictate to me and my fellow students essentially how to run our lives makes me see red. The price of freedom is eternal vigilance. If we hope to prevent people like this woman from stripping us of our freedoms, we must always fight back in any way necessary. I can't imagine who this woman is trying to please with these proposals. She certainly isn't trying to make the people they would affect, the students, happy. I only rational interpretation I can come up with for this is that its a diversionary tactic designed to draw attention away from something her party cannot get their way about otherwise, probably some funding issue. Were this woman not a state representative, people would laugh at her and she certainly wouldn't get any of her statements printed in the paper. But because she was able to sucker people into voting for her, what she says and thinks is considered newsworthy. Hopefully the voters in her district will now realize the error of their ways and remedy this situation come next election.
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
Kids can't go to 7-11 and buy Playboy until they're 18. And if they're just barely 18, they'll have to back it up with ID such as (!) a license.
... the Capitalist Conspiracy of America), not imagined terrors in the night. But on the other hand, being paranoid doesn't mean they're not out to get you :-)
Not a license, just proof of age. You can get legal ID from your local DMV without bothering with all that driving crap. And it's exactly the same way on the Net as it is IRL, at least nominally. Paranoia helps no one... we should be worried about real problems (CCA?
* And remember, it's spelled N-e-t-s-c-a-p-e, but it's pronounced "Mozilla."
jmcgrath@azleg.state.az.us
Oh, are you being picked on by life? It's just not fair that some people are financially successful while others are not. Nevermind that this success usually comes about as the result of hard work and the utilization of their own talents. We have to make sure that everyone makes the same ammount of money, no matter how hard they work or how fortunate they are. Better yet, we should begin work on making sure that everyone is equally talented and able. This is one area where the human genome project will pay off. In the future no one will be smarter or stronger than anyone else. We will all be the same with the same ammount of money in our pockets and everything will just be wonderful then. Nevermind that people will have nothing to aspire to. All these aspirations don't feed the zillions of starving and underpriviliged children who have no chance whatsoever of making anything of themselves anyway because republican's won't let them. Oh, what a brave new world we will live in, I just can't wait!
Muslim community leaders warn of backlash from tomorrow morning's terrorist attack.
i thought we were supposed to be crawling out of the dark ages of taking fundamental rights away from people.
there better be a lot of noise over this or i'll have to wonder if this society is falling apart under our noses because most people dont think to stand back and observe how absurd situations like this really are.
Once again, TAXPAYERS AREN'T! For the average public university, gov't funding accounts for only a VERY small share of the university budget. The vast majority of University funding comes from tuition, alumni funding, sports revenue, and corporate grants. So tax money pays for *maybe* 5% of the cost of that pr0n download, and you're one of about 250M people sharing that 5%, many of whom don't agree with you on this. In comparison, the student is probably paying for 50-75%. So what the HELL gives you the right to tell them what they can and can't do with their line?
And this is in addition to the MAJOR 1st amendment issues regarding all three laws.
--
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde
Single sex dormatories are banned there. We found that single sex dorms attracted unwanted attention from various local perverts. I'm sorry to say there were two rapes on-site.
Rapists and perverts, we discovered, are much less likely to prowl around dormatories if they have a 50/50 chance of coming up against a bloke. Imediately after the second rape we went even further, and put members of the men's rugby team on the ground floor (UK rugby = US football without padding, very agressive game).
Obviously we don't have mixed sex rooms (not officially anyway! :-)- but it is official college policy that a corridor of entirely girls' rooms is Not Allowed. Typically rooms are single or twin bed, no more, with 8-16 rooms to a corridor. Most bathrooms are en-suite to protect students' modesty, but there are a few remaining shared bathrooms; we found all students were quite happy wandering about in dressing gowns in mixed sex groups. Some buildings are organised into sets of 4-bedroom appartments with two appartments per floor; in which case there must be males present in the ground floor apartment.
This policy has been in effect for 8 years now. There have been no further rapes and the prowlers disappeared after one month, never to return.
Oh, and thanks to the mandatory condom dispensers we didn't have any unwanted pregnancies either.
--
Andrew Oakley - www.aoakley.com
I for one am alarmed at the rate at which restrictions are being placed on the data one may access over college networks. I am a student at Northwestern University (the OTHER Wildcats), and the most recent measure taken here has been the blocking of access to napster. Traffic to the napster server was taking up a significant portion (%20-30) of available bandwidth, and I can see how the network administrators might do that for any site, regardless of the content offered. I am disgusted by the fact that this representative is attempting to restrict the content that legal adults can view in a private environment, without any implied negative effects on others around them. Who does she think she is? What portion of the population does she think she is representing? And her further actions of attempting to restrict who may enter these adults' rooms is (er, are) the straw to break the camel's back. If I were more eloquent, I would send a veiled insult to her intelligence disguised as a formal letter of opinion of her proposed policies. Anyone else want to try it instead of me?
[regaurding single-sex dorms]
But what about homosexuals?
Ok fine so I do mean to make a joke of the whole issue.
And if anyone thinks I'm being rude, well I may not have any gay friends but I dont have any straight friends either, So I feel that I am not in any way being rude.
-- 'The' Lord and Master Bitman On High, Master Of All
The internet is not just information, it is also an addiction. The faster it gets, the worse the withdrawl. And college connections tend to be freakn' fast. Female-male interaction is almost essential, as we are human, and as humans were made to be social animals. And a combination of removing internet connection and social interacton would call for a lot of really ticked off students.
Note to self: Do *not* attend Arizona State University.
--
These aren't the droids you're looking for.
I work in the Computer Centre of a British university, and we hear phrases like 'free speech' banded about all the time by students whenever we feel we have to lay down the law about what is and is not acceptable use. We're quite strict about somethings now; real audio, chat software of all types and network games are all banned. These things have always been banned on campus but in the past we have been lenient. The situation changed recently however when universities were required to pay for the amount of data downloaded rather than pay a flat fee. This has pushed costs up to a more realistic level. British universities aren't rich - I don't know what the situation is in the US but we work to tight budgets. We can't simply can't afford it *and* maintain any kind of level of serviuce to the academic community at the same time. With the introduction of tuition fees - most higher education was funded by taxation until recently - we have to ask what we should allow. There is a case for academic use of chat software I suppose, but it's way open to abuse as well. We're ready to talk to people about possible solutions but anyone disciplined for breaking the rules (a verbal slap on the wrist - nothing serious) has yet to offer any At the end of the day, fee paying students should not be subsidising the social lives of the minority. The ISP situation in the UK at the moment is that most of them are free. No setup charges, no cost by time spent on-line. They have a simple flat rate of nothing at all. We don't feel particularly totalitarian because of this. If you want to chat with your mates, download music or whatever then get an ISP account. It's the least selfish option on the part of the user.
These things have always been banned on campus but in the past we have been lenient. The situation changed recently however when universities were required to pay for the amount of data downloaded rather than pay a flat fee. This has pushed costs up to a more realistic level. British universities aren't rich - I don't know what the situation is in the US but we work to tight budgets. We can't simply can't afford it *and* maintain any kind of level of serviuce to the academic community at the same time.
With the introduction of tuition fees - most higher education was funded by taxation until recently - we have to ask what we should allow. There is a case for academic use of chat software I suppose, but it's way open to abuse as well. We're ready to talk to people about possible solutions but anyone disciplined for breaking the rules (a verbal slap on the wrist - nothing serious) has yet to offer any
At the end of the day, fee paying students should not be subsidising the social lives of the minority.
The ISP situation in the UK at the moment is that most of them are free. No setup charges, no cost by time spent on-line. They have a simple flat rate of nothing at all. We don't feel particularly totalitarian because of this. If you want to chat with your mates, download music or whatever then get an ISP account. It's the least selfish option on the part of the user.
"Good, now we can shoot at the bastards in every direction" - Col. Chesty Puller, United States Marine Corps at the battle of Inchon, Korea 195[?], after his battalion got surrounded by 8 North Korean Divisions. And it was cold out... WAY off topic. ctimes2
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
I appreciate the eagerness of people wanting to move to australia, and no doubt it's a wonderful place, but a few hundred a week is a tiny, tiny quantity compared to the US. You asserted that nobody would want to move here, and that "most foreigners" see the US as some horrible fascist state. But the facts belie your opinion. We get several MILLION immigrants each year, and would get many many many more if immigration was any easier. So it's obvious you don't so much speak for "most foreigners" as you do "a few foreigners."
When I'm singing a ballad and a pair of underwear lands on my head, I hate that. It really kills the mood.
-Tom Jones
At what point do we allow our children to be adults? They are paying rent to a landlord to live in dorms. The landlord just happens to be the state. If the student/ adult damages the property, sue them for it. Welcome to adulthood. When your 18 you are subject to the same laws as everyone else - YOUR PARENTS DO NOT APPLY to your f'n situation. If kids want to miss class or not study because they are wacking off, well they just wasted a year of mommy and daddy's full scholership. I did it and now I'm still working to put myself through school, and it was the best thing for me. At least I'm not wasting gov. money on grants and loans I use for parties! Before I rant on forever - My 2 cents - Quit allowing someone elses parents to protect thier adult aged children! Let America GROW UP! Sheesh!
ctimes2
My cube. My friend. My solace. My prison.
I'm just glad I don't go to school in Arizona... :D
"Hitler is a socialist"?
I presume you're basing that on the Nazis being National Socialists? So you'd also say that the German Democratic Republic (East Germany) was a shining example of democracy? So any other two bit totalitarian state can be a democracy?
The only socialist thing about the Nazi's was their name. In the early 30's "socialist" was as desirable a nomenclature as "democratic" is today.
"McGrath said yesterday she has decided to remove another provision in the bill that would have required residence hall administrators to conduct random monthly inspections of all residents' rooms for prohibited items". Well thankyou ma'am, how grateful they all must feel.
As of 1988 (the most recent figures I could find in five minutes of web browsing), the top 10% of income earners were responsible for 57.2% of the total tax revenue. The top 1% were responsible for 27.5%. Don't talk to me about 'fairness'.
/rose/ dramatically with Reagan's tax cuts, from 48% and 17.6% respectively. So much for that other myth that tax cuts benefit the rich more than the poor.
Figures are from the Joint Economic Committee's annual report for 1992. A related article from the Cato Institute points out that this percentage
> Simple question: what if we made a level 15% flat tax on everyone.
> EVERYONE will pay less money, but the higher income people will
> drop from the mid 30% range, while lower income families will drop from
> mid 20% range. Is that unfair to lower income families? Of course not!
> They pay less because they make less, ok?
Don't be so disingenuous.
Instead of making up fictional examples of tax schemes which exist nowhere except in your imagination, suppose we prepare for the forthcoming election by focusing on what the candidates actually propose, OK? If we're going to discuss U.S. poltics, no one is interested in your totally hypothetical "what if we made a flat tax..." business, because NONE of the candidates are talking about a true "flat tax," one which would tax a rich parasite's effortless investment income at an equal rate with the hard-earned wages of a full-time worker.
Like all the slogans of the Republicans, "flat tax" is a lie. Forbes's tax plan is NOT a true "flat tax." It is a free ride for people who's income derives from investments, placing ALL the burdens of Federal taxation of wage-earners. The point I was trying to make, that you elided so lightly over, is that Forbes's so-called "flat tax" plan is NOT flat. It cuts the taxes on his effort-free multi-million dollar income to ZERO, while continuing to levy taxes on wage-earners.
> Live your life and don't worry about what Steve Forbes pays in taxes.
So in other words we working-class types should mind our gardens, keep our noses to the grindstone, keep our mouths shut, and let our social betters make each and all of the economic decisions. Evidently you don't understand how democracy is supposed to work. The basis for democracy is self-interest, after all. You, ashleyb@microsoft.com, with your Microsoft stock options, are free to vote in your best interests, but you insist that I should "live my life" and passively step back from the democratic process.
"Hey, you dumb workies, don't even bother to think about politics. Just keep your eyes glued to the Jenny Jones show. Meanwhile we rich folks will continue to sequester more and more of the wealth in the nation, as is our God-given right."
To Hell with that.
> And I am sure that you have the EXACT same beliefs as your father.
At least I don't drive down to the Veteran's Hospital cemetery and piss on my father's grave. That's a character issue, you know.
Yours WDK - WKiernan@concentric.net
derobert's post needs a few "up points".
And for my 2 pc:
I wouldn't use the argument of college students being "adults", when the mainstream concept of childhood in the U.S. involves children living off one's parents until out of college, and parents providing as little discipline as possible. (side note: if I hear one more parent tell their kid to "go to time-out", I'm going to vomit on them.) As a result, there are tons of adult-aged people with 8-year old mentalities.
Last I checked, the reason most students dropped out of school in freshman year is lack of preparedness, lack of work ethic, and lack of respect for most anyone (including themselves), with helping assists from weedout professors who see teaching as a burden and insist on making students feel (2x) that burden.
Besides, those burnout/dropout cases are lowering the cost for the rest of the population.
As for the bill, let it pass, and let Arizona sink into the desert. If the bill passes, maybe they'll find Kansas somewhere under the ground.
As for the power issue, I agree completely, and was about to post similar comments. Why do you think there has been such a push for deregulation? So far, corporations can do so much more than governments in the way of retaining concentrations of power and control, without having to be bound by those silly notions of individual rights.
1) WE PAY FOR THE BANDWIDTH!!! I can find out how much of my room & board goes to that (and i know it does; their papers say so).
2) Yes i am using most of my modem bandwidth. Letting you get 2K/sec on it will be VERY noticable to me. However, most colleges havea T3 line, and the addtion of 1000K/sec isn't really noticable.
Not that it matters, but b/c you are ignorant, i must inform you that i'm not even a Muslem. I just believe in "judge people by the values of thier own culture" (meaning, not OUR values).
Who is talking fictional tax scenarios now? My scheme is more likely than Steve Forbes paying 0 dollars in taxes! Your attempt to turn the argument into a battle between poor working people and the rich is not surprising. Is there some sort of competition going on? Is there some seething jealousy of the wealthy because they earn more? If everyone gets a tax cut, what could be bad about that? Who cares what kind of tax cut it is...if one person pays one dollar less with it and everyone else doesn't pay more than it is good!
I don't think I asked you to step back and let the wealthy run the country...but do you have to be so upset about a wealthy person who has more money and by definition the ability to do more? Of course you vote, of course you speak passionately about it to others, but I have never understood where the anger comes from. You attempt to single me out with my 'stock options', am I now a bad guy? Am I more noble if I believe in something AND poor? Personally, I would really hate to think someone looks at me and is upset and jealous of me JUST because I have more money than someone else.
And on sequestering wealth, do you call it that when you get your yearly bonus and put it in the bank? Correct me if I am wrong, but doesn't the whole concept of capitalism come down to the theory that you are rewarded for your work, and the more you work the more you are rewarded?
When it comes down to it, you have the ability to make yourself happy or miserable. Who is president and what taxes you pay is a source of debate, anger, but when all is said and done I have more important, more special things to think about. Maybe it's just me.
well, I have spent enough time on this topic..I leave the ball in your court.
Sorry I upset you...really!:)
If the article read "College Students Spend Your Money on Porn," you'd be pisssed.
Not nearly as pissed as I am by your insistence that my tax dollars should be spent on censorware. That particular argument works both ways, kiddo. Oh, and don't you think it's a *little* offensive to insist that students spend a big chunk of change censoring themselves?
What are these MAJOR issues you're talking about? Since when do students have any right to high speed internet access in thier private residence? I'm a student and I have to dial. There is no issue because no rights are being taken away, whatever access thay are given is a benefit NOT A RIGHT.
The word you're looking for is privilege. And you're right, it is--one that they pay for. Given that they pay for it, it is their decision as to how it's used.
As for the first amendment issues:
1. The provision prohibiting visits in dorm rooms is a clear violation of the right to peacably assemble.
2. The other provsions are violation of the right to free speech and the press, as they prevent students from expressing their opinions over channels made publicly available for that purpose. (By making the channels themselves unavailable. If you believe that filtering software only gets rid of porn, I've got some seafront property in Kansas you might be interested in.) These provisions are roughly the same as prohibiting the (publicly funded) post office from carrying porn, or from delivering/picking up materials which are not study-related. And you KNOW how constitutional either of those would be.
--
There is no sin except stupidity -- Oscar Wilde