Tufts expelled a student for grade hacking. She claims innocence | Hacker News Reader

Tufts expelled a student for grade hacking. She claims innocence

techcrunch.com

45 pointscampuscodi7 comments

"The bulk of the evidence came from Tufts’ IT department, which said each incident was “well supported” from log files and database records. The evidence pointed to her computer over a period of several months, the department told the committee."

[Anecdote]

I was in a lab one evening doing homework when out of the blue, I started receiving dozens of emails with variations of the subject [0]. I was getting DMCA notices with thousands of dollars of fines for each one. They were accusing me of pirating music on the school's network, and the IT department forwarded them to the party that best matched the description in the DMCA. Some of the details in it included [1].

The problem with all of this was I never torrented on the school's network and the times the infringement took place were times I wasn't on campus since I lived off campus. When I brought this up with the IT department, they disregarded my complaint and said my laptop was identified as the source. When prodded for more information on which APs the device was connected to at that time, they refused to check.

The university has free legal council for students so I booked an appointment, explained my situation, and had proof myself and my laptop were not on campus during the time the infringement took place. They talked to the IT department and I was sent a short email saying the violations were routed to me by mistake and they were dropped from my record. The university dynamically allocates IPs to devices for blocks of time, and the infringing IP was allocated to me earlier in the day, but not during the offense. When they forwarded the emails, they only checked who had the IP first during the day.

I can't imagine how many other students might have been falsely accused of this over the years because of bad practices by the IT department.

[0]: 'Unauthorized Use of Copyrights RE: TC-be738249-d341-4a1d-ac11-9e66d285dfca ISSUE=23120 PROJ=7'

[1]: "Infringement Source: Torrent, Timestamp: 2015-09-15 03:01:00.0 GMT, Infringers IP Address: 129.21.89.206, Infringers Port: 18359"

I'm glad the student legal clinic worked for you.

In this post's case, if the student is innocent, I think they need a high-powered lawyer who will take the case on contingency. Which I think probably means not just reinstatement, and extra help in getting student's career back on track, but big enough damages/fees to make it worth the lawyer's while.

Winning legal action that hurt would also help protect other students. Universities understand money and reputation. Individuals within universities understand their own careers. Everything else varies by individual and faculty.

(Though I should add that I only recall hearing positive things about the university in this post, and I think of the broad space of medical/health practitioners as highly ethical and thoughtful. I'd be very disappointed if it turned out that the university made a big mistake.)

I won't trust the evidence provided by the IT department of Tufts. At least, that should be backed up by some third party.

The other issue is about the student. Why she needs to increase her grades for DVM? Is there a benefit to it? (CGPA from JD matters if you are trying to get a clerkship with top judges/justices.) What is in it for her?

It's hard to decide based on the article whether she's guilty or not, but I wonder if the school will be required to furnish strong evidence if it hopes to collect on the loans.

Student loans are not dischargeable under U.S. bankruptcy law, but this girl is Canadian. Apart from any lawsuit she may be able to file against Tufts, she may have an out there.

Something is rotten when it’s easier to get a journalist to write an article than it is to get access for an investigator not affiliated with the University to reanalyze the IT department’s evidence. Hope she is able to get a fair hearing, via legal action if necessary.

I quickly learned how to game my high school math teacher's grading system. I was a genius at math and could do 1 or two new problems and completely understand how to solve that type of problem.

My teacher scored a homework assignment for 3 points of the final total of points. A quiz was 10 points. A test was 100 points.

Since I could ace the quizzes and tests with every answer correct, I figured out I only had to do enough of the homework to make sure I knew the problems. I would get one point for the assignment. Whenever she gave extra credit assignment, I did that.

It always burned her butt that I would come out with a low B for the final grade.

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