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Illinois University Restricts Access To Social Media, Online Political Content
onproton writes Northern Illinois University recently began restricting student access to web pages that contain "illegal or unethical" content which, according to University policy, includes resources used for "political activities...and the organization or participation in meetings, rallies and demonstrations." A student raised concerns after attempting to access the Wikipedia page for Westboro Baptist Church, and receiving a filter message informing him that his access of this page would likely violate the University's Acceptable Use Policy, along with a warning that "all violations would be reviewed." This has lead to questions about whether some policies that restrict student access to information are in the best interest of the primary goal of education.
Perhaps it is because the university is more about indoctrination than education.
For however many years freedom has left.
Well, that's one place I won't be applying for graduate school. Although NIU sounds like a fly by night school anyway... It's UI-UC that's on my radar.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
Supposedly the policy applies to employees not students.
An AUP governs the use of campus equipment and services.
I clicked the link and read the article, and there's gasping outrage about how they're "limiting free speech" by telling students they *also* can't use the campus computer systems for things like political messaging, meetings, rallies, or anything else - in other words, no, you can't spam the student body.
And for those of you who think that it's not right that they'd limit that sort of usage, think long and hard about this:
- Campus Christian Ministry decides to start spamming the entire campus with pro-life messages.
- Young Republicans club start spamming the entire campus with messages calling for the impeachment of Pres. Obama.
- ROTC program starts spamming the entire campus with messages encouraging students to sign up for military service.
Where's your unfettered free speech now?
Fred died.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
Someone in IT over the summer was told to put on filtering NOW but some campus administrator. That person then found one quickly and installed it, without checking what it actually filters (although filtering companies do make that tough). There's probably lots of gotcha sites that are filtered at NIU nobody knows about yet.
Nobody liked Fred except the 100 brainwashed family members in his "congregation". I was thoroughly disappointed with the gay community's reaction to his death, I had been looking forward to a Brazilian style Mardi Gras at Fred's funeral. Turns out they have a lot more self respect and common decency than Fred, who knew?
And did you exchange a walk on part in the war for a lead role in a cage? - Pink Floyd.
God damn Fred Phelps.
It little behooves the best of us to comment on the rest of us.
http://doit.niu.edu/doit/polic...
Using the resources for political activities, including organizing or participating in any political meeting, rally, demonstration, soliciting contributions or votes, distributing material, surveying or polling for information connected to a political campaign, completing political surveys or polling information, and any other activities prohibited under the ethics act and/or other state/federal laws.
Emphasis mine, and this makes sense from a CYA perspective. The next one though it bizarre:
Use of personal social media sites, following specific direction to cease or not utilize university equipment or time to an extent or during time periods that would interfere with professional responsibilities, including, but not limited to
??? - can somebody explain what the heck this means. Oh wait, next link.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/...
That only applies to employees. I think that's where the confusion is. Students -- unless they are an employee
Sorry, this was a poorly planned, executed and communicated rollout. Sounds like a new position for Vice President of IT will be opening for a major university soon...
Anyone who is stupid enough to pay a University via a banker to become "institutionalized" deserves exactly what they get.
In the age of the internet, if you have to pay someone to sit you in a room and teach you like a trained monkey you have serious problems that go way beyond education.
Universities are sort of like the last DINO's that hung around after the big rock thing from the sky happened. In this case the rock is the formation of the modern internet.
I would pay about $500 bucks for a Bachelors degree, max for the outside chance a University actually provided something I can't do myself with a Internet connection.
Got Geometrodynamics? Awe, too hard to figure out? Too bad.
I guess this is why this fine academic institution has never crossed my radar. I have never heard it mentioned in any publication, any citation, any contest win. I am not saying that they don't publish squat but that nothing they have published managed to catch my attention. And when I read something in Nature, etc I will check to see which institution the various authors are from to mentally compile a list of intellectually active institutions.
So as far as I can tell this place is the intellectual opposite of say, MIT.
exactly what is "illegal or unethical" about the content of the Wikipedia article on the Westboro Baptist Church?
Universities (including the public ones) are a business like any other and are highly sensitive to voting with one's wallet.
At the one I work at we actually go to great lengths *not* to monitor, record, or police what students do beyond what's needed to keep the peace.
we also invite students to bring their game consoles in after major releases so we can fine tune stuff to ensure decent latency.
tl;dr somebody is having power trip there and/or just bought a shiny new piece of oppressionware and checked all the boxes.
If the entire student body doesn't shut down the school, or at least picket the office and generate some arrests, they should be horribly ashamed.
At the University of Virginia, the Board of Visitors fired the president in an unwarranted way. Student protest helped get her reinstated. If student action can do that, I'm pretty sure it can get such an absurd policy overturned. You just have to have the brains to recognize it, and the balls to pursue it.
Anyway, shame on the students if this is allowed to stand.
For all intensive purposes, "whom" is no longer a word. That begs the question, "who cares"?
According to one of the comments in TFA, https:/// worked fine, so they were only blocking HTTP. This leaves all the other suspects to their devices - the cornucopia of IM clients, VPN traffic, torrent traffic, usenet, diaspora/retroshare, in-game discussion via Steam or Second Life, IRC, etc. Sure, some of those are summarily blocked, but it seems they're doing such a poor job of acting in malice that I'd deem it sufficient to chalk the issue up to incompetence instead.
I'm not sure if you read the article and checked the block page screen shot, I did. The University spokesperson stated that it was not a block and the student could log in. The image has no option to bypass or go to a next step, it's a block.
Next, the spokesperson claimed that the policy only applied to staff at the University. Reading their AUP there is no such restriction to staff, and in fact the first paragraph includes students. Northern Illinois University information technology resources, including the electronic communications network (NIUnet) on the NIU campus and off-campus education and research centers, computers attached to this network, and any associated computational resource or service are for the use of persons affiliated with Northern Illinois University, including faculty, staff, emeritus personnel, and students in good standing. Emphasis mine.
The spokesperson may have been confused (or simply dishonest) as later in the same paragraph a justification mentions employee ethics as a "justification", not an inclusion or exclusion. Information technology resources are provided by the university to further the university's mission of research, instruction, and public service. The use of these resources should be consistent with this mission, this policy, and the University’s other use, security policies, and other applicable regulations including the State Officials and Employees Ethics Act (SOEEA). Again, emphasis is mine.
The AUP is not legaleze, and can be read and interpreted without much difficulty.
Sure, it's possible there was a network F*ck up or something else which cause the student to receive the block. That said, if the student agreed to this AUP the University is within their rights. I have modified numerous customer facing AUPs, they are always reviewed and approved by legal before consumption. If the University claimed to have released this AUP "on accident" or "with accidental content" I would call bullshit.
If their intent was not to censor content for students, the AUP needs to be scrapped and re-written to exclude students from the policy. Obviously they also need to correct their censoring software to exclude student computers and networks and ensure that it's only censoring content for faculty.
-The wise argue that there are few absolutes, the fool argues that there are no probabilities.
Than a college campus. Good Job and All Hail
The question is why? What do they hope to achieve with this kind of censorship. I can understand wanting to censor sites that promote and enable illegal activities. I can understand K-12 schools trying to censor porn and violence (doesn't work but at least trying keep parents happy, BTW). So what do they hope to achieve with blocking Wikipedia and other sites? What's their intended outcome? And if they're blocking individual pages, who's combing through the entire internet and deciding what to allow and disallow and how are they deciding it? (Abviously not volunteers from Westboro Baptist Church).
BTW, are they also blocking TOR and encrypted proxies? Are they preventing students from using their own mobile connections? Can't see how this will achieve anything other than generating suspicion ill-will and contempt for the university's leadership.
This position that the university has taken will have definite chilling effects on academic freedom. It is clearly inconsistent with their mission as a research university, and I sincerely hope they reconsider this policy.
Guess it depends on who "owns" the internet access at niu. Prsumably this only pertains to university computers so 3g and 4g devices are unaffected. The question then is whether students should be allowed to use privately funded internet access by basically renters or tenants. Most private business have internet policys. Dont see the damages here.