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Internet Curfew for College Students?

Posted by ScuttleMonkey on from the no-more-overnight-torrents dept.

140Mandak262Jamuna writes "IIT Bombay, one of the top Indian engineering schools, is restricting internet access to its students. The restriction is simply to cut off all internet access at night from the dorms. The school claims the 24/7/365 internet access is hampering academic performance, personality development and extra curricular activities. Though these are the 'official' reasons, it appears there are other reasons too. Mr Prakash Gopalan, the Dean of Student Affairs, says, 'one only had to look at the hard drive of any of the students' computers to see that bad content dominated over good.'"

5 of 342 comments (clear)

  1. Re:Seems reasonable to me. by Broken+scope · · Score: 4, Informative

    Except most of my studying comes from online resources. Oh fuck, I don't have access to the JAVA API, shit I can't get to suns site now. I've got some work to do and I need to go look some stuff up in the crypto. To bad thanks to asshats like you I can't do that now. Shit?!? Something is wrong with my IDE. Oh fuck, I can't go get another copy because I can't get to Borlands site.

    You pay for the access, you can do what ever the hell you want with it. I pay a technology fee which covers my access. I'm paying, I get to do what I want with it as long as I don't harm the universities network environment. I've read the contract very thoroughly.

    --
    You mad
  2. Re:Internet access is integral to education... by lucabrasi999 · · Score: 2, Informative
    And why are you assuming all college libraries are open 24 hours?

    I never assume. Instead, I do something that you apparently don't. I read the FA --

    Ms Thosar-Dixit said students would not have access to the internet in their hostel rooms between 2300 and 1230 but could log on in the library or their departmental laboratories where access will be uninterrupted.
  3. Re:One more college differentiator by seadoo2006 · · Score: 2, Informative

    Already did ... Penn State University was almost immediately crosses off my list after I got accepted because I discovered their 1.5GB/week limits and draconian policies. If I am paying over $20,000 a year to attend school and live in their REQUIRED dormatories for two full years, I better receieve high speed internet access that is of equal or better quality than a high speed cable line for $40.00 per month. I hate penny pinchers.

  4. Re:Poor Preparation For Life Experience by junglee_iitk · · Score: 3, Informative

    If you don't like the rules, move out of the dorm or change to another university.

    Only none of which is feasible.
    1. I am an alumni of IIT-Kanpur (as my handle suggests), and the rule is that if you are a student, you HAVE to live in dorms. I know that same rule applies in IT-BHU.
    2. Change university? Are you kidding me? And in NOT-AT-ALL individualistic society, you get to leave one of the only best institutes, when all these institutes share exactly one admission procedure (JEE)? Next thing you will be telling is to have sex in public in India.
  5. Re:What about this? by warpEngine · · Score: 3, Informative

    I'm at IIT-Bombay student, so I can answer that. There haven't been enough computers in labs for *years*, and the authorities have only been sitting on their ass. The ones that are there are down as often as they're up, and many machines are underpowered. And one of our labs is not air-conditioned and gets blistering hot in the summer...

    So we buy our own systems. And now they turn off network access at nights. Great going.

    Most of us need all-night access before submissions, and to work on our projects, etc. Not to mention keeping in touch with people over chat. One of my friends who works on GNOME is really pissed because he chats in the night over IRC. Not to mention that IRC is blocked (he ssh-tunnels).

    The network is absolutely essential for academics.

    OTOH, most of us spend all our time in front of computers. I did. I've done little in the last two years off the computer. When I came here, I was very happy and thought that with my own computer and 24/7 network access, I'll do a lot of programming. But two years after that, I've done zero programming. Only wasted much of my time watching Star Trek, reading reddit, digg and slashdot... We're addicted and only now beginning to realize the problem. And same is the case for many, many students. I have to wonder -- if I'm complaining about not having network access for 9 hours in the night (11 to 8), something's wrong with me.

    So they're hurting academics for, say, 2% of people who genuinely need access at night, while de-addicting a much larger number of people and improving our quality of life. Should the university do that? They're in a lose/lose situation. Turn off the network and they're accused of screwing with academics, or they'll be hundreds of students who have no life to speak of. Personally I'd treat students as adults and give them the freedom to do good work, realizing that most will only waste their time, but I can see why IIT-Bombay is doing this.