Hacker News Reader

Comment by pitaa | Hacker News Reader

>two feminist groups and several former students filed a federal complaint accusing the University of Mary Washington...of failing to protect the female plaintiffs from cyber harassment...

I am confused as to why anyone thinks its the University's duty to protect their students from "cyber harassment." I mean, I am aware of Title IX and all, I am just shocked at the amount of control, influence, and involvement into their students' lives universities are expected to have.

If a student is driving to class and hits a bird (causing them gross emotional trauma) did the university fail to protect them from rouge avians?

View on HN

Sadly it's what the parents today (who pay the tuition) are demanding. Hence "unique snowflakes" and "helicopter parents." Add to that a healthy dose of media sensationalism to a degree that never used to happen. Everything is drama, crisis, outrage, injustice.

Today? Old news. Decades ago, I grew up in a private Christian school with specially-oriented textbooks (e.g. "Biology for Christian Schools") to avoid exposing kids to information the parents didn't like. Heck, so did my dad (though his was less extreme than mine - more recently, when he discovered more of what the one he'd picked for me actually taught, he apologized... whoops).

Hell, what do you think white parents moving out of integrating school districts to keep their kids away from black students was about? Same damn thing.

When you want the best possible outcome in a lawsuit, you go after the parties with deeper pockets, and the greater incentive to settle.

I agree. No coincidence in Yik Yak shutting down and being absente from the lawsuit I guess. Was it about Snapchat, I would bet it would be included in the lawsuit.

Sadly, you are right-the-fuck on with this comment.

So it's nothing new. The lawsuit is about the same old bullshit it's always been about: Money, power, domination, control.

If you're imagining a student driving to class, you're imagining a very different kind of environment.

In the schools where these kinds of demands are made, the university provides your housing, food, utilities, medical care, the centers of your social life (both in terms of facilities and student organizations), local police department, credit union, etc. Even if you live off campus, the entire neighborhood is an (unofficial) extension of the university community. Even if you're at a private business, the university probably owns the building and leases to that business. Private apartment building, your neighbors are all students and faculty.

This typically happens in a small, walkable enclave where it would be very strange for a student to have a car or commute in from outside the enclave. The university owns every part of a student's life in this case, and it's reasonable to think it has some responsibility to keep its community healthy, within reasonable limits.

Your criticism seems more applicable to a commuter/community college, not a residential one.

Without a totally Orwellian system to deal with this, how could a university respond in this case? I can sort of see where you're coming from, but there's no clear-cut solution that would be in the university's power. It might be their job to protect students from harassment on Facebook (and I would say even that is slightly extreme), but I cannot fathom how a university could even begin to approach monitoring Yik Yak. Would all students be forced to hand in their cell phones and decrypt all their data? Or should we just set up surveillance cameras in their rooms so we can see when they use their phones? Yes, there are reasons for universities to protect their students, but there is clearly a line to be drawn in this specific case.

Are you really confused? Leaving the law & federal funding requirements aside, Universities seek to have successful graduates & thus it is in their best interest to provide an environment that equips their students to learn. Being harassed undermines these goals, so regardless of the law, it is in their best interest to prevent such disruptions.

I'm not sure I understand the bird analogy. Is the point that Universities can't control birds? Well, Universities can & do already actually demand that their students not harass other students as a condition of their attendance.

Universities seek to have successful graduates

Once, yes, but I wonder if that is true anymore in these days of $60k+/year fees. Do universities make more from undergrads or alumni donations these days? Because if their goal really is successful graduates then they are not setting their students up for success by policing every dispute. It would be completely different obv if YikYak was the "official" app on campus, but the university administration is nothing to do with it, and wouldn't have the power to block it even if they were. What are you expecting them to do exactly?

If a crime has been committed, go to the police, the real police.

Successful graduates become alumni who make donations.

To be clear, no one is suggesting that Universities should be "policing every dispute." I am stating that Universities can and do seek to create the most effective learning environment for their students--and that harassment undermines this goal. This is why Universities, as indicated in the article, blocked (aka geofenced) YikYak (& though it is not mentioned, other apps as well).

Not sure I understand how that's relevant, but most University rules are not laws--but, while breaking them may not be criminal or even illegal,it can still get you thrown out of school.

At this point I could take this to mean that you're arguing for safe spaces. While creating an "effective learning environment" sounds noble, some students seem to be interpreting this to mean they shouldn't have to hear viewpoints they disagree with [1].

Coddled students don't make successful graduates, as evidenced by the interns that were fired last year after writing a petition about the office dress code that they thought was unfair [2], failing to understand that their job was not a democracy.

Of course, there are times a university should get involved, such as if the harassment is coming from a professor or university-owned email address. But at some point, the most I think should be expected from the university would be a referral to a therapist so the student can work through things and learn coping strategies. It may sound callous to say, but like it or not there are plenty of things that can be upsetting, hurtful, or emotionally damaging to someone without actually being illegal or even reasonably preventable. The university could help to make their graduates successful by making sure they are capable of coping with this fact of life.

[1] https://www.nytimes.com/2015/03/22/opinion/sunday/judith-shu...

[2] https://www.inc.com/alison-green/about-those-interns-fired-f...

No, I'm not arguing for "safe spaces" here at all. Nor am I suggesting students shouldn't "have to hear viewpoints they disagree with."

I am arguing that, along with legal duties, Universities have an interest and an incentive to prevent their students from being harassed. To be clear, being harassed is not being disagreed with.

I don't see the relevance of this anecdata & punditry to the issue, nor do I know what "coddled" really means or why such a generalization would apply to every University. Regardless, pattern recognition over decades of experience tells me that people who are new to the workforce inevitably behave as if they are new to the workforce. And also, that with each new generation, pundits offer some variation of "kids these days." On the plus side, if we've moved on to "coddled", maybe people will stop complaining about those damned millennials!

Anyway, even if we disagree, I am glad that you do think that sometimes the University should get involved & that mental health services are useful.

If people are being harassed and threatened over an app, that is no different to them being harassed by POTS - the police can deal with that.

But if people are going to their university and saying hi, I installed this app that you didn't write or tell me to install, and I don't like it, sort it out for me, then that's an unreasonable ask, IMHO. It's like getting angry with a bakery because they won't repair your bicycle.

If street corner pay phones and phone books were introduced today someone would sue because of the anonymous harassment they enable. It's hard to see where we are now as societal progress.

You bring up "interest" but original post is about "duty".

They aren't the same thing. Universities might have an "interest" in protecting students from online harassment. That doesn't mean a lawsuit alleging the university has a "duty" to protect students from online harassment has merit.

I was trying to leave law aside:)

But, yes, Universities also have legal duties to their students. However, these vary significantly based on too many different factors to speak usefully in generalities (eg based on city & state, public or private, is it a research university, is there some kind of consent decree, etc) and of course, the facts of each case.

More simply: whether a University has a legal duty to protect students from online harassment will depend on the specific situation, but, in all cases, the University will have an interest.

The important question is actually "should there be legal duties", which you can determine from the original point: "I am just shocked at the amount of control, influence, and involvement into their students' lives universities are expected to have."

I (for one) believe universities should not have a legal duty to prevent online harrassment, even though it may be of interest to universities.

Kindly, I don't think that is the important question because that's not how legal duty works. Basically, there are always legal duties, some of which are codified & some of which are common law.

I'm not arguing there is always a legal duty here, nor that there always should be. I'm stating that whether there is a duty will always depend on the individual fact pattern & the laws/regulations that apply to that specific University.

Not only do Universities operate under different jurisdictions with different rules & laws--but their level of "control, influence and involvement" varies along too. This changes what duty there is--as do the specific facts.So such generalizations are not applicable.

Hope this makes sense; its not easy to explain!

> Equips them to learn

I would argue it equips them for the real world. The internet extends off campus with them when they graduate.

Rouge avians -> rogue avians

Rouge avians would just be red birds. Not sure which is funnier in this example.

My school had geese, which were definitely rogue-ass birds.

Seriously. Geese are evil.

After being chased one too many times, they inspired me to learn to hunt waterfowl. I get back at them every year now >:)

They're actually delicious though. I like duck, but I can't eat very much because it's so rich, but goose is a less flavorful, but still gamey type of meat. If you haven't ever tried it, I recommend it. Be VERY careful when you are eating it though, biting into a shotgun pellet can crack a tooth.

Why shouldn't the university offer some form of protection? Even if it's the form of blocking the app?

The police clearly don't give a shit. Someone has to do something. What are universities doing with all that money they get from tuition?

Blocking the app is a really extreme move that harms the vast majority of users who are using it in a harmless way.

Imagine if people started putting up fliers that said mean, harassing things on lamposts and building walls around campus. Would tearing down the buildings and lampposts be a good response? If the campus were just a big open field with no buildings or anywhere where someone could put up a mean, harassing flier then the students would be protected from being exposed to them.

No one should be harrased or be on the receiving end of mean behavior. At the same time, there usually is only so much a university or other organization can do to protect its members before those protections have negative consequences for lots and lots of innocent community members.

> No one should be harassed or be on the receiving end of mean behavior.

When people say this, it comes with an implied "except for some people". Lots of people deny it, but it's true. I like adding this implicit addendum to posts on Facebook explicitly, because every time, the person says something like, "Oh, no, I mean that for everyone." And then I say "You mean everyone including, for example, Richard Spencer?" Now, I don't care about that guy, but I was fairly astonished at how many people were normalizing political violence that time when somebody punched him. That's when I first understood viscerally that every one of those statements about inclusion and tolerance comes with an implied "except for some people."

What are universities doing with all that money they get from tuition?

Hiring more administrators and athletic coaches.

> Why shouldn't the university offer some form of protection? Even if it's the form of blocking the app?

Why should the University be in charge of controlling what apps you use? If you don't like the app, don't use it, it's not difficult. Some people liked using it, and it had genuine uses, so blocking it is pretty extreme and pointless. And set's bad precident.

>The police clearly don't give a shit.

The police aren't surrogate parents. They're there to deal with crimes.

I live in the city of Fredericksburg, Virginia. There was a savage murder a few years ago where the girl who got murdered was being harassed on YikYak. I wouldn't go as far as to blame this app for her death but she did receive threats through it, which later turned out to be her roommate who murdered her.

>I am confused as to why anyone thinks its the University's duty to protect their students from "cyber harassment."

Yeah it does seem odd that a university wouldn't want its students to be harassed on campus.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com