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Comment by dragonwriter | Hacker News Reader

> An adversarial system is where, for example, exams are proctored because the students are not trusted.

Much is made of unproctored exams, but at least 30 years ago (and I haven't heard of this changing since) students were given master keys which opened almost every part of campus, and had official 24/7 access to almost everything. Also, lockpicking was a widely known and broadly accepted student hobby, and there was apparently a fairly well-known heirarchy of which places to which students did not have official access were merely nominally off limits and would result in token punishment for the sake of form (provided no damage to persons, property, etc., was done) and which were really, seriously off-limits.

That is, the culture went beyond just unproctored exams.

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My recollection is that you had to actually have a reasonable justification to be given an official master key, but if you acquired an unofficial master (such as by borrowing someone's official master and copying it) nobody would bother you about it.

When I was there (late 70s, early 80s) the best masters were actually not official masters. The best were Whitehead masters, made by a student named John Whitehead. He hand filed a master with intentional deviations from ideal designed so that when you copied it, the copying errors would make it closer to ideal. Whitehead masters were copies of that hand filed key.

Several people from campus security used Whitehead masters instead of their official masters because the Whitehead ones worked better.

I had an accidental master for a while. My room key happened to function as a master when inserted halfway. I don't remember how I discovered that. I'm assuming that they have long since changed the lock systems, but on the off chance they have not, it was room 21 of Ricketts.

> if you acquired an unofficial master (such as by borrowing someone's official master and copying it) nobody would bother you about it

How do they justify this when the keys may be locking doors that for example protect extremely sensitive personal information? Like for example financial information for support or allegations of misconduct or criminal activity? Don’t they have a legal obligation to protect these things?

Personal observation - assuming everyone is out to get everyone else is a cultural thing that wasnt such a concern until quite recently. It's a bit like looking at certain phrases in common use 70 years ago and wondering why anyone would use them.

You don’t have to assume everyone is out to get everyone, just that someone might possibly be out to get someone.

Also, whatever you assume, there are legal and moral obligations to protect information in any case.

Because once upon a time you could trust and at the same time people didn't feel like that they had that much to hide. In modern society secrecy is the only new 'experience'.

Presumably they multiplied the probability of this occurring with the damage caused and decided that it was lower than the benefit of the high-trust society.

I don’t understand - don’t they have legal obligations to protect? Saying ‘but we trusted’ won’t work in a court.

Sure, but the court won't make them pay unbounded damages.

I don’t know how it is handled now, but when I was there things that needed higher security like that were in rooms that had locks not on the master system.

You had most older buildings on one brand of ordinary locks with a master system, and the newer buildings with better ordinary locks on a different master system, and then a few rooms with Medico high security locks.

> How do they justify this when the keys may be locking doors that for example protect extremely sensitive personal information?

The locks for rooms that had extremely sensitive information, personal or otherwise, did not use the same master as was available to students, and used a different brand of lock that was more resistant to lockpicking. And, perhaps more important in practice than the actual resistance to lockpicking, the brand was widely understood as a signal that picking the lock was not acceptable. Presumably, they also had electronic security.

As sibling commenters have commented, yeah, the higher-security rooms used Medecos instead -- they had not only up * down for the pins but also directional slant (don't really know how to describe this, but pretty and much harder to copy or pick). But also, think through student motivations: I used my master to get into the steam tunnels, to find cool things, to gain access to the old wind tunnel, to find space to make art, to win at capture the flag. Who wants personal info or allegations of misconduct? And moreover, isn't the computer a much lazier vehicle for finding such info?

> My recollection is that you had to actually have a reasonable justification to be given an official master key

My recollection is that that was strictly correct but that the scope of acceptable justifications (ca. 1990) was broad enough that that was all but a formality.

> That is, the culture went beyond just unproctored exams.

Indeed. Students also left their dorm rooms unlocked. I never heard of a case of one student stealing from another. A friend of mine at another university had his locked dorm room looted within his first week. Ugh.

We had coed dorms (apartment-style) and always left our door unlocked because a party might arrive. No theft problems.

This reminds me of my time at Virginia Tech (recent grad here). Those of us on upper quad never locked our doors. This had apparently been a thing on upper quad all the way back to the start of the university and that only changed when we moved to the new buildings with electronic locks. I'd say once we moved into the new dorms 75% or more of us were jamming the doors/locks so that they wouldn't lock. This only really started to change after "the adults" started reprimanding people for refusing to lock their doors (There were concerns about ability to compartmentalise/hide in an active shooter situation as well as potential fire safety issues).

It was a really unique and pleasant experience. So much less stressful being able to completely trust the people around you. It's a shame that the tradition has started to die out.

Of course the upper quad is made up of the cadets. That might have something to do with it. I would never leave my door unlocked when I lived on campus. These were the days when Vawter was all-male and before they razed Thomas Hall and got rid of the best breakfast dining hall.

They are no longer given masters. The steam tunnels are patrolled by security and alarmed now.

Security almost certainly doesn't patrol the tunnels with any regularity (they're uncomfortable to be in, after all), especially after the recent switch to contracted security. Maybe they'd patrol the entrances on occasion. The majority of doors are silent-alarmed, but plenty of students know which ones :)

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