Bad lab facilities haven't been much of a problem because most of us have our own computers. It's only if everybody were to work in lab that would we really be in trouble. We protested a lot and the curfew has been scaled back to 11 PM to 8 AM, which is a reasonable time for most of us. The administration claims to be buying more computers so that students are no longer forced to buy their own machines. Things turned out well.
First thing I wondered is...what the HELL is that administrator doing looking at students' harddrives??
Sounds like some bad snooping going on there.
Relax. They don't look at our hard drives and they're not allowed to, either, by the privacy policy. But since they talk with students as opposed to living on an island, they know. Or just logon to any of the hundreds of FTP servers running on campus, and you'll know all you want to.
I believe some people here already have their own wireless internet connections, and more might join the club. But all network switches in the dorms are powered down in the night (they have a clunky timer attached to each switch), so it's not like one person has an account and everyone uses it.
Hmm... let's see. A few gigs of porn, a few dozen gigs of videos -- movies, TV series, etc. Lots of games. And when you don't feel like watching porn/videos or playing games, you can go to random websites (orkut, reddit, various crap sites that only help you pass time with zero learning...) and while away the day. When you have hundreds of students in campus living their life that way, and bunking classes, too, I'd fully agree with the Dean, even though I'm a student at IIT-Bombay.
As an extreme example, a student here committed suicide because he had no time for academics, after watching movies. He had the IMDB top 250 collection on his hard drive. Bad by any definition.
I'm not saying that it does or does not justify the action, but there's a very real and widespread problem here.
All the switches in the hostels go down at 11PM. No physical access. There's a timer attached to the switch's power supply that cuts power at 11. So even if one person gets a private wireless connection, only he (and perhaps his neighbours) can use it.
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.
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Bad lab facilities haven't been much of a problem because most of us have our own computers. It's only if everybody were to work in lab that would we really be in trouble. We protested a lot and the curfew has been scaled back to 11 PM to 8 AM, which is a reasonable time for most of us. The administration claims to be buying more computers so that students are no longer forced to buy their own machines. Things turned out well.
First thing I wondered is...what the HELL is that administrator doing looking at students' harddrives?? Sounds like some bad snooping going on there.
Relax. They don't look at our hard drives and they're not allowed to, either, by the privacy policy. But since they talk with students as opposed to living on an island, they know. Or just logon to any of the hundreds of FTP servers running on campus, and you'll know all you want to.
I believe some people here already have their own wireless internet connections, and more might join the club. But all network switches in the dorms are powered down in the night (they have a clunky timer attached to each switch), so it's not like one person has an account and everyone uses it.
The question is not do they have a right to do X? but: will it help or hurt academics? We think it does, especially given the abysmal lab facilities.
If they decide to turn off the electricity supply, will you still say, put up or leave?
Hmm... let's see. A few gigs of porn, a few dozen gigs of videos -- movies, TV series, etc. Lots of games. And when you don't feel like watching porn/videos or playing games, you can go to random websites (orkut, reddit, various crap sites that only help you pass time with zero learning...) and while away the day. When you have hundreds of students in campus living their life that way, and bunking classes, too, I'd fully agree with the Dean, even though I'm a student at IIT-Bombay. As an extreme example, a student here committed suicide because he had no time for academics, after watching movies. He had the IMDB top 250 collection on his hard drive. Bad by any definition. I'm not saying that it does or does not justify the action, but there's a very real and widespread problem here.
All the switches in the hostels go down at 11PM. No physical access. There's a timer attached to the switch's power supply that cuts power at 11. So even if one person gets a private wireless connection, only he (and perhaps his neighbours) can use it.
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.