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Comment by GrantMoyer | Hacker News Reader

> I am not planning to get a lawyer involved as I have faith that UW leadership will make it right in the end.

All evidence so far indicates they will not make it right, but instead they may make it even worse. Your faith is wildly misplaced. Seriously, talk to a lawyer.

Keep in mind, just because you seek advice from a lawyer doesn't mean you need to take legal action against the school. Talking to a lawyer is not an escalation; the school doesn't even need to know you consulted one. A lawyer will advise whether you should take legal action and any more amicable alternatives available before they do anything on your behalf.

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Just piling on here because upvotes are not visible. The one thing you can guarantee is that your good faith is not reciprocated by the university. Get a lawyer.

To make it easier: it sounds like you're still registered. University of Washington offers Student Legal Services ( https://depts.washington.edu/slsuw/ ). Set up a referral with one of them and talk to them. Even if they're employees of the university and don't want to work with you to sue the university itself they may be able to give you good advice about how to proceed.

It’s a funny thought, but looks like a nonstarter:

> SLS cannot represent a student when the opposing party is another UW-Seattle, Tacoma, or Bothell student or UW entity.

They can have a conversation without being representation and should connect OP to someone who can represent them.

No they can't have a conversation when they know of a non waivable conflict.

Surely they could refer the enquiry to the bar association or something in this jurisdiction.

How would the lawyer even know, without conversation, that there was a conflict?

> Surely they could refer the enquiry to the bar association or something in this jurisdiction.

They might but in many cases wouldn't even do that because they still wouldn't get paid for it. Doesn't matter, you don't need them for that.

To be fair, in many cases, they can be held responsible for whether you refer people to the right place.

They can basically say "i can't speak to you". More than even that is tricky.

As for the latter, that's why i said "when they know of a non waivable conflict".

Emphasis being "know of".

Here, they know they have a conflict - they have a client, it's not this person, and they know their client will be adversarial to this person. They aren't even part of a law firm that represents multiple clients regularly or something like that where sometimes the conflicts might be waivable (often not, but still)

This is a very very easy case.

If they don't know they have a conflict, sure, they can have a conversation for the purposes of understanding if they have a conflict.

That's not this case though!

An example of the difference between being independent vs third party.

Who mostly pays them sets the rules.

The entity paying the lawyers isn’t making the rules here. This is professional ethics: the attorneys in question have a conflict of interest.

It’s subtler than conflict of interest.

Anyone working for students while being paid for by the university (like some ombudsman) might think twice before going too hard after anything in the institution side that they work at, with people, etc.

This isn’t to say it should be adversarial, just not endlessly borne back against the currents into being neutralized by bureaucracy and office politics.

If it was independently funded..

You describe why this is a nonwaivable conflict of interest.

Precisely

I know very little about lawyering, but I could imagine a UW-alum or Seattle-area lawyer advising pro bono bc of generosity or good publicity on a very newsworthy case

Anyone on here friends with a UW-alum or Seattle-area lawyer who might be interested but doesn’t read HN?

Do American university students belong to unions?

It's very common in the UK. The most visible part of the unions is running social activities, often bars and events, but they can also provide legal advice to their members.

Graduate students (who teach, do research, and some administrative tasks for the university) occasionally do. What American schools usually have is a “student government” which is approximately 90% roleplaying as elected officials, and the remaining 10% is deciding which banquets they should host themselves to spend the small budget the university gives them.

Not undergraduates. The "student union" in this context is 100% a social entity.

Graduate students sometimes are part of unions, but usually only if they're also employed by the university (somebody paying full tuition for an MBA probably isn't in a union, but a doctoral student teaching or doing research might be).

Undergrads doing part-time work at the university to pay bills (dining hall, bookstore, etc) could be, in theory, but probably aren't.

Even if this student isn't a member, the local graduate student union (https://www.uaw4121.org/) would probably be a useful ally. All TAs are in the bargaining unit, and UW CSE has _a lot_ of undergrad TAs, so I wouldn't even be surprised if this student is a present (or former) member.

Upvoting too.

> Unless, that is, I agree to work on a comparable solution for the university focused on solving the underlying problem I was building HuskySwap for. They would presumably own the IP and were clear that I wouldn’t be compensated. But it was implied that they would then remove the hold, allowing me to graduate.

Wow. Literally blackmailing a student to do illegal work (at least would be categorized like that in my country). A student that already paid money for class and potentially a degree the univ is trying to block, mind blowing. OP, 1000% lawyer up.

Relying on good faith won't help you at all.

Someone at the uni has taken this personally, and has attacked you. At this point, if you don't defend yourself - that person has won.

Please seek legal advice.

Their response on face value doesn't make sense. But if I had to guess, you inadvertently made someone in the registrar's office look bad. They probably had to answer to "why didn't you think of this?" If that is the case then it makes a lot more sense and is retaliatory behavior. You can't undo their insecurity and loss of face. Therefore you should not expect a reasonable response.

Act accordingly.

Educate yourself on your options. This is why people are recommending a consultation with a lawyer.

Reach out to your friends and contacts in the University. Leverage existing ones to make new ones. Others may be in a stronger position to put pressure on the registrar's office.

Use the news and media to further ratchet up pressure.

Stay positive. Fon't stoop to their level, it won't help you.

And if you have to walk away it won't hurt you too much in the long term. After about 5 years in industry nearly all companies stop caring about credentials. Just get your foot in the door somewhere and shine, that's what I did and it worked out for me 26 years later.

Hang in there.

Seconding this. It's entirely likely the registrar is this petty and boneheaded. It's less likely that their boss is though, this is a really bad look for the university.

Personally I would find a way to contact the president of the university (possibly through university PR, who also care about public image) and simply state,

"The registrar is asking me for quid pro quo, that I develop software for them in exchange to restore my ability to register for classes."

and include a screenshot of that communication.

Additionally, consider "agreeing" to their demands, if they will unblock you immediately. Register for classes, then reneg on your half of the "deal". Even if they then retaliate, that strengthens your position (a) that they are engaging in quid pro quo, and (b) that there's no valid reason that you should be barred from registering for courses, and also buys you some time.

A +1 to everyone else who has said get a lawyer.

I'll add another angle: financial.

You have invested years of time and presumably thousands of dollars into your schooling. Their threat that they will not allow you to graduate unless you give them unpaid labor without a clear boundary condition is a threat. While I haven't seen the correspondence, from what you said it appears they're doing the moral equivalent of one of those sitcom situations where someone is compelled to do what the other person wants under a threat, and even when they've done it, the threatening person keeps the threat.

A good lawyer (and not all lawyers are good) will help you understand your rights and your position.

As others have said, this is not an escalation of aggression, and not only don't you have to tell them whether you've seen a lawyer, unless the lawyer is speaking on your behalf- you don't have to tell them anything, and you shouldn't tell them, or tell us (in case they read this, which they likely will).

A lawyer in this case is more of a scholarly resource, telling you what your options are.

Agreed.

To add to that: it is understandable to expect and hope for the other party to behave rationally. But there is a power imbalance that the other party is exploiting and for all we know intends to continue.

> reneg on your half of the "deal".

deny, delay, defect.

and don't sign anything!!

> and don't sign anything!!

This. If asked to sign anything, say that you have to check with your attorney first.

> But if I had to guess, you inadvertently made someone in the registrar's office look bad. They probably had to answer to "why didn't you think of this?

That was my initial thought too. The upside is that that "someone" likely has a boss who called them out - so there may well be levels of the hierarchy that won't lose face by backing out of the exclusion decision. The challenge is to get their attention.

The problem is that their leadership may not care. Bureaucrats at higher education don't take the job because they're good at it. They take it because they're not and want a job with high job security. The poor pay and unrewarding tasks are acceptable to them as a means to coast. Couple that with a job that can be quite stressful at times, students can be very demanding, and you have a recipe for entrenched apathy. I base my assessment on my time working for a University for 8 years.

The registrar's office are the wrong people to appeal to. The deans office can fix this, but they may only move if it makes the University look bad. That's where the news and media can help, but this guy likely needs help to make that happen effectively.

Yeah, let me give some perspective here.

There's somebody in the registrar's office whose job is to be responsible for the production process of registration. They are minimally staffed and given just enough resources to run that process. Likely at some point their leadership told them they had to make an API so that they could integrate with other systems. Due to poor funding and lack of skills, just doing that is a full time/major job.

Then some student comes along and says "hey look if I scrape this API, I can make an app that helps users! That's what APIs are for, right!?" The student is likely quite smart and probably built something that is useful.

But students aren't full time software engineers. They lack knowledge and context about how to build production systems that handle the load during the registration crush and also don't cause undue load on the backend API servers.

So when the dean comes to the head of IT for Registration, and says "wait, this student just did something that you were supposed to do, and it looked really easy", you just made the IT person's life much harder but didn't actually necessarily solve the problem. Now the IT person has to defend what they have done, while looking bad... and is not getting any further resources to fix the issue.

I think this is a variant of the "why don't you just..." and chesterton's fence. That is, if you're inexperienced, it's often easy to come up with a naive solution without understanding the context, that kind of works but that actually makes things overall worse. For example, what if your app crashed the registration backends during the middle of registration. Are you, the clever student, on call during registration (24/7) for your app, and in contact with the folks who run the registration backends?

It's easy to criticize the IT folks at Colleges but they are not resourced to handle things like this.

It's really noteworthy that other students have the opportunity to engage in this and other projects as part of their curriculum. They can gain valuable experience while also contributing to the college community. It's disheartening that this situation has led to such drastic measures, impacting students' futures. It seems like there could have been more thoughtful ways to address this on the college's part.

I am not sure I consider the university's production registration system as a useful project for students to contribute to. Those are systems that are the responsbility of the university administration, not the educational mission of the university.

Yes, the university was drastic; if I were the person responsible, I wouldn't have started with a terms of service violation and putting registration on hold; I'd write a nice thank you note with some encouragement, along with a direct request to hold off running the application until the next registration season, and a calendar entry to discuss this in person/off the written record to explain the more subtle aspects associated with developing production applications in a university environment.

> They lack knowledge and context about how to build production systems that handle the load during the registration crush and also don't cause undue load on the backend API servers.

That sounds like a cop-out. Sure, students may not know about all this, but they're also not building Google. Many people run businesses without caring about such things just fine. Most things don't require six nines of reliability and people don't expect them to be this reliable. Students in particular are used to university systems being constantly down, or resource-starved to the point of uselessness for no good reason.

> it's often easy to come up with a naive solution without understanding the context, that kind of works but that actually makes things overall worse. For example, what if your app crashed the registration backends during the middle of registration. Are you, the clever student, on call during registration (24/7) for your app, and in contact with the folks who run the registration backends?

It's hard to come up with a solution that's worse than what you get at universities for this stuff, which usually is nothing at all - and even if it is something, there's no one on call to help the student anyway.

Yes, but as we know, the best way to make a project that is late/slow/unreliable even later, slower, and more unreliable is to add inexperienced devs to the project. Which is (from the perspective of the university) what they are trying to avoid.

well except they allegedly asked said allegedly inexperienced developer to develop the thing for them, for free

Yes, I think this post has established that whomever created the response to the original ToS violation (rather, just a plan to violate the ToS) wasn't being very thoughtful (assuming everything is being described correctly). I would assume that at this point, the discussion has been moved above the original employee who responded and is being dealt with at the dean level (with the goal to be avoiding UW appearing in a bad light in the press).

I've seen hundreds of "administration outrage" articles and I guess I've kind of learned that the backstory is usually more complicated, nuanced, and reasonable than the original poster implied. But the internet mobs proceed anyway.

I got their code to run and it's not good. It's unusable as is and could be created from scratch in a better way in a day. It lacks all integrations with the University API, that part was never written.

The existing matching of swap requests is poorly done and requires much further work.

There's nothing of value here that OP had to scuttle.

You write as if you've had some experience .... Still, the IT team should have reached out to the student - it's a university and they especially should be good and dealing with inexperienced, well-meaning students - and straightened it out: Hey, this is a great idea; it will also need this and this and something like this to work with these other systems and handle the load on registration day.

> Yeah, let me give some perspective here.

This is spot on and way more likely than my contrived example. The point holds this is political as all things are in University environments.

Another interesting observation I made from my time working at a University is that it was one of the most toxic and political work environments I've ever had the displeasure to work in.

APIs are not scraped. Web sites are scraped. APIs are simply used.

> And if you have to walk away it won't hurt you too much in the long term. After about 5 years in industry nearly all companies stop caring about credentials.

That is very wrong, in my experience. Many jobs require college degrees; much status in life requires college degrees. I know people who are smart, successful, and eternally embarrassed when that comes up.

Also, you did the work, you deserve the degree - a college education is a real, valuable thing. Don't let the current anti-intellectual, anti-institutional, anti-liberal trendiness distract you. The trends pass, and decades from now you'll still have a degree and the truths of knowledge will remain.

> That is very wrong, in my experience

It's right in my experience, but I'm also aware that its 2025, not 2007 when I got away with this.

Certainly jobs will say they require a college degree.

I have three and a half years of a five year degree in computer engineering. My current job as a VP of Engineering "requires" a degree. The language in the job description is very clear.

Guess what? That's always negotiable with enough experience.

If you can talk intelligently about your subject matter in depth and you can demonstrate a history of that, then you're fine.

A degree doesn't magically make you a gifted programmer. It merely shows you where to start. You still need a lifetime of self guided continual education to be really successful in your career.

I think where it hurt me most was early in my career where I likely earned less than I would have with a degree.

This will likely become harder to do with time as computer science and hardware slow their ever changing advancement and become more established.

By all means get the degree if you can. But you can still over come not having one with enough self study and being strategic about which jobs you take.

You are an anecodotal example, and no matter what is generally true about the IT industry, we can always find anecdotal counterexamples on HN because there are so many IT people here.

Many places won't look at you or will downgrade your application without a college degree, and data shows earnings are clearly less (as you say).

I'm truly glad things are going well for you. It's not the only thing in life, but if someone is a quarter away from getting one they'd be crazy to walk away.

Also worth noting that it would be incredibly naive to expect good faith to be reciprocated by any institution at all throughout the course of one's life, which sounds cynical, but lets be real. If there's a way that almost any institution or person that you're transacting with in good faith—including schools, workplaces, lawyers, medical professionals, the leader of your country, sometimes family, whatever—can get away with fucking you over, they might. Not always, but expect it. Which reminds me, I need to pester a doctor about a web design invoice.

> If there's a way that almost any institution or person that you're transacting with in good faith [...] can get away with fucking you over, they might. Not always, but expect it.

This. Always protect yourself, even when operating in good faith. You may only interact with someone professionally, but you never know what kind of person you are really working with. Sometimes people may seem nice, but are pure evil.

In this particular case, it is likely the people in charge are completely unaware of the people doing the blackmailing. This may even be criminal, so it might be worth just talking to the police.

Yep, they'll walk all over whoever they can, until they receive just enough bad publicity or pushback, and suddenly it's not an issue anymore.

> You may only interact with someone professionally, but you never know what kind of person you are really working with. Sometimes people may seem nice, but are pure evil.

It's not even always a case of being evil. Large institutions/companies are full of polices and processes designed to protect the system at all costs and some nice people will turn their brain off and strictly follow those policies either because they feel they have to, because it's the easiest thing to do, or because they know that as long as they stick to the policies (or what they think the policies are) they'll be safe.

Absolutely. It's my impression—after many mistakes—that one of the most important pieces of advice I could have given myself at a younger age, is that "your job is basically a function of what you're empowered to do and what you're clearly rewarded for, don't imagine it to be something it's not, don't pretend or act as though you have more influence than you do".

Your bank's website might have shit accessibility and usability, but it's not because the developers suck, it's because they aren't paid to do more than the minimum that they're paid for, and it's stupid for them to incur that cost or scope risk just because they're altruistic. If they spent 5 hours on a Wednesday optimizing a thing for screen readers, but there's literally no measurable reason to do so, that's a mark against them if there's anything else to do that does.

The same pattern is true across other jobs. It's not the admin's job to have empathy or to decide whether a policy should exist, it's there job to enforce arbitrary policies. It's also not the job of a University to educate people, that's now a University typically makes money, it's only even tenuously their job to get people between having no measure of knowledge, and having a measure of knowledge, but not necessarily to have any specific impact on that.

To add to that, always know your rights and responsibilities. Don't let anyone walk on your rights and make sure you do at least what you are supposed to do. From moving to a different country, people will prey on you so fast if they realize you don't know your rights (rental rights are soooo much different here than in the US, for example, and they will literally prey on your fear of being evicted). In essence, knowing what you CAN do and MUST do can make all the difference in the world.

Student legal services usually can't help you with disputes with the uni -- I remember reading this when speaking to them about a (unfair IMO) traffic ticket when I was a student at a different institution.

Joining the dogpile to get a lawyer. Your degree is at stake, and this isn't the sort of issue that will burn up your money if you don't want it to. Go in for a consultation and see what they think. Bring all correspondence. Worst case scenario you pay him for a few hours after he has some answers for you.

An attorney kept me from making some very expensive (honest) mistakes and payed for himself many times over. Don't gamble with your future.

cosign, this story is outrageous, it is Lawyer Time, Now. The university is completely out of line and this has all the makings of a disastrous outcome the way they are operating

> University of Washington offers Student Legal Services ( https://depts.washington.edu/slsuw/ ).

Do not talk to them. They report to the same people who are persecuting you. Find another attorney - ask someone local for references, maybe a student from the area could ask their parents.

Unlike most of the other commenters I have personal experience fighting a college administration in court. It was a massive time waste and I came out losing a years of my academic career where they lost nothing (money is absolutely not a factor for a large university, nor is stalling court proceedings to waste your life). I'm not even allowed to elaborate deeply on what it was about, the settlement for putting it behind me was a binding NDA.

This isn't advice it's just a story about what happened to me, to give you an idea of how things *could* go for you:

What I did to warrant initial sanctioning by my college was filing a witness statement describing a petty disorderly offense another student did. Apparently the college didn't like that I filed a statement with the police and it did not go through their internal system. The school placed a hold and I contacted my dean by email. I was told by the dean, in writing, that I was not being sanctioned but the hold would remain until I attended a hearing to describe the incident as prescribed in the handbook. When I went to this 'procedural hearing' with the other witness, they brought us in one at a time in front of representatives of the student body and the administration. At the end of my account they told me I would receive their decision and sanctions by mail. They issued formal academic sanctions and created a remediation plan not unlike what they are requesting of you.

I retained a lawyer at this point and ended up filing a complaint in civil. There's nothing speedy here, judges stalled, the school stalled. Almost 2 years went by and we finally had the lawyers draft a settlement that made it possible to pursue college again. In the meanwhile they increased the sanctions on the remaining witness that didn't sue in order to retaliate. The student we filed the statement about, apparently the school couldn't touch since the police charged him. He got off paying a ticket and no other sanctions, last I heard he was in postgrad for mathematics and doing well for himself.

I didn't have it quite as bad as you, but I did go to war once with my alma mater regarding a particularly small lab director and part-time instructor who had a Napoleon complex going on. He was directly and obviously infringing on student's First Amendment rights, not to mention bullying the class as a whole and attempting to threaten people. Ironically, his heart was in the right place, but his execution was way off.

I was fortunate in that I went to college much later in life, after a career in the military, and as I'd had enough bullshit there, I made the conscious choice not to tolerate any out in the world.

Long story short, he and I butt heads. Then he wanted to take up to the Department head. For someone with a Ph.D., she definitely didn't think it through, just proving you can have a Ph.D., even in a STEM field, and not be too fucking bright... but... when it got to the Dean of Students, and the campus's VA liaison all sat down for a meeting with me, and I started pointing out that F.I.R.E. would have a field day with this, and would we really want a veteran-led incident on campus with a lab director that's flat out admitted in recorded interviews (I was attending college in a one-party recording state, so I had recordings of every one of these meetings) that he doesn't care about students' First Amendment rights??

That put everything into perspective really damn quick. I have never forgot that meeting because there, in that moment, we all looked at each other and everyone understood exactly what I was saying. The Dean of Students stood up and said, "Do you want to apologize to the department dean...?" and I just raised one eyebrow and he immediately shot back, "Right... we should probably all let this go." I nodded and said, "I think that'd be the best option for everyone involved, after you guys sit down with Lab Director and straighten him out."

I've done some things I'm not too particularly proud of in my life, but this was one time I really felt like I did the right thing.

The First Amendement limits what the US Congress/government can do, not what a private person can do.

> Congress shall make no law respecting an establishment of religion, or prohibiting the free exercise thereof; or abridging the freedom of speech, or of the press; or the right of the people peaceably to assemble, and to petition the Government for a redress of grievances.

If parent went to a state school, that is the government. If he went to a private school, FIRE goes after them for violating their own contracts that often mirror 1A language.

That's a wild oversimplification, it of course applies to state and local governments as well and has for a long time. A public university is a state entity.

If your college or university accepts money from the government, in public spaces on that campus, like say... anywhere outdoors, for instance, out on the quad, where this happened, that is considered a protected area for speech.

Please familiarize yourself with the various ways higher education comes under the umbrella of “state actor.”

Funnily enough, today I am I am (re)starting my post secondary education after a decade and counting in the military.

Your comment reminds me of one of the misconceptions that friends have of me/military. I am not as it happens a particularly good shot/fighter/camper/adventurer. However the military has more then prepared me to wade through a bureaucratic swamp to tell a room full of people paid more then me that they're wrong and will fight to the proverbial death over it.

That being said, other then some culture shock, not expecting anything too dramatic, ought to be a good time really.

I'm always curious in cases like these what the actual exercise of your "first amendment rights" was that the other person took offense to.

Made fun of a post-doc lab instructor that was under the lab director's purview.

I shit you not. He got upset that someone was - verbally - making fun of this guy. He was a goofy as fuck guy, so I see why 18-22 year olds would do that. I wouldn't because he was a good guy with a good heart, he just looked goofy, acted goofy, and plain old WAS goofy, but that's not enough for me to make fun of someone.

It is enough, actually, but I would never do it maliciously, and I would always do it to someone's face, and it would always... always be good-natured, not intentionally cruel.

That's a mafia with extra steps

Welcome to the US justice system

Thanks for speaking up. The internet talks about getting a lawyer like it’s a magic (and free) button you press to resolve a situation.

It’s not, and in some cases it can turn your problem into a more expensive and protracted different problem if you’re not careful.

I’d be especially cautious around a University that has already proven itself to have bureaucratic people who will turn small issues into threats of expulsion. I wouldn’t be surprised if they have legal counsel who is equally overstaffed and itching for something to do.

It is usually free and kind of magical to talk to a lawyer, though.

"You can beat the rap, but not the ride".

I am still dealing with a case with a 3 letter agency, going on 6 years now. "Bureaucratic violence" is a thing.

Wow this sounds like extortion to me.. I mean not just from the school, but also in the court system. I don't really understand Academia much or if this would effect a person attending another collage, but with something like this, I would drop out of college entirely and take the self-teaching route or online education. I'm not going to allow myself to be subjected to an abusive educational and court system.

Unlike most of hte other commentators I also have personal experience fighting a college administration -- and winning. By threatening lawyers, too.

I got into an Honors Study Abroad thing through the school, but was worried about an incomplete grade screwing up my GPA or causing issues. Emailed the admin about it + study abroad office -- they said all good, it's kosher.

Turns out it wasn't, and after dropping 41k to lock in housing and study abroad they told me I couldn't go because I couldn't transfer credits. Well here is a lesson in "keep your emails" cuz I dug that out and picked a fight with the administration.

They eventually gave me all of my money back minus the $600 non-refundable deposit. I was ready to go to the mat for that, too, but they offered to get me a guaranteed slot for on campus housing and permanent first crack at class selection similar to athletes and disabled students. I was sick of commuting by that point and took the offer. I figured out it was a way to get more money out of me pretty quickly -- solve an issue and make money via housing -- but my RA in the on-campus apartments was super cool and basically let me and a roommate squat for multiple summers. Still friends with a lot of those folks I met living on campus too.

Worked out okay, all things considered. Lawyers won't be a guaranteed win, but don't assume that just giving up is a better deal.

Agreed. You need a lawyer. Not necessarily to go to court, but at least to write some letters. That should not cost more than a few hundred dollars. Don't wait.

Document everything. Make copies. Store them somewhere safe.

Read Washington State law on extortion in the first degree.[1] Follow the link to the definition of "threat", especially the section on "official action": "To take wrongful action as an official against anyone or anything, or wrongfully withhold official action, or cause such action or withholding". It's really bad for a state official to attempt extortion. It's a 10 years in prison felony offense.

Edit: Having a lawyer write and send a letter on your behalf tends to resolve a large number of annoying situations. A lawyer on the other side will have to read it. This immediately gets you past the first-line people to people who have to consider consequences.

[1] https://app.leg.wa.gov/rcw/default.aspx?cite=9A.56.120

Also, merely them knowing you have a lawyer instantly reframes the problem in their eyes. The path of least resistance to dealing with a "problematic" student is making the student go away. The path of least resistance to dealing with a "problematic" student with a lawyer is making the lawyer go away.

All of a sudden bureaucrats will be getting visits from internal legal departments asking very pointed questions about questionable actions.

Yes and.

Yes, and even if it doesn't go to court, the university will know that it will cost them time and money.

It's entirely possible that university president or higher administration is unaware of the situation, and if they were, will intervene. The best way to do that is to have it brought to their attention via a legal letter, which then means they need to bring in their lawyers.

A good lawyer for the university won't want to fight because fighting is not in the best interest of the university. A good lawyer will say "We threatened the student with this? No good can come of that... let him register, let him graduate and make this all go away."

That doesn't mean the client (the university) will take it, but overall fighting isn't in their interest either.

Get a lawyer. Holding your degree hostage unless you work for them for free is off the charts ridiculous. They might have just paid for your entire education.

When I went to the UW I used Arexx and my 2400 baud modem to turbo register for classes the moment the system went live.

> Arexx and my 2400 baud modem

Arexx was fun back in the day. A nice scripting language for the time.

OP please consider listening to this reply. Do not rely on an unaccountable bureaucracy to "do the right thing." They don't.

At least he'll learn this valuable lesson pretty young. It was fairly devastating to me by the time I learned it well into my 30's.

A lawyer is NOT the right next step. As soon as you engage a lawyer the school will switch from treating this as a student policy matter (which will be resolved in a timeline of days) to a legal matter (which will only be resolved in a timeline of years). The timeline question is of no concern to the courts or the school but makes a huge difference to you.

It does seem like you need someone on your side. A list of people to consider: your academic advisor, the professor in whose course you built the prototype application, your department chair, student ombudsman, dean of students. If the university is being as unreasonable as your posting makes it sound like, you will have no trouble getting one or more of these people on your side and they will be able to apply pressure to the registrars office on your behalf if needed to get your hold lifted.

This is the right answer. A large institution like a university is not a monolith. The university will produce antibodies to external participants, like lawyers (or the media). You're most likely to get better outcomes if you can ensure the conflict plays out within the university and its rules, structures, and participants. Your work now is to convince other members of the university to advocate on your behalf. (It should not be difficult. If this is as you describe, reasonable faculty members will be your allies.)

The same goes for publicizing this further. The student newspaper is probably okay, but keep talking to other media in the room as a bargaining chip. Bad press may well force some administrator's hand.

To be sure, a chat with a lawyer may be helpful to get a sense of the universe of possible outcomes pursuing extramural action, but don't let anbyody send any lawyerly letters yet.

> You're most likely to get better outcomes if you can ensure the conflict plays out within the university and its rules, structures, and participants.

It's too late for that, even if you're correct here (and I don't think I agree). News of this has already spread, and will continue to spread.

Having been on both sides of the fence here, this is highly contrary to my experience. Large institutions are more than happy, in many cases, to bully anybody when it benefits them. But as soon as possible legal/media issues emerge they're going to suddenly be your best friend looking to make things right as quickly and cleanly as possible.

The ombudsman is definitely not a bad idea, but in most cases the mere hint of legal involvement would get this resolved without any legal involvement - just going on for a consultation doesn't mean one has to go to the next step, and in all probability you won't have to.

Hard disagree. It doesn't harm to try to solve it with the help of a trusted intermediary. One doesn't lose anything but a bit of time. Instead it shows good faith. You can always escalate to the lawyer afterwards.

If they're attempting to extort him, then it's a legal matter whether or not he sees it that way.

You can consult a lawyer without having the lawyer engage with the university, and without the unviversity even knowing that you did.

Instead of taking your advice on the matter, maybe see what the lawyer has to say.

Not to mention that University of Washington is a public university run by the state. IANAL but this may well fall into constitutional issues so the ACLU might be interested, not to mention any number of other pro-bono lawyers. Most attorneys I’ve interacted with give a free one hour consultation and this sounds like a rather clear case where they can at least refer the OP to someone in their network who might be interested in doing it for free (again IANAL).

Having seen what some other university administrations have done to darling students and innovators even just around such things as lab space, parent comment is right on the money.

^ This.

You need a trusted advisor on your side who can look at it with a calm mind and perspective on what is normal, acceptable, and legal. You're young and have been slapped around, seemingly inappropriately.

If you were in physical pain, you'd talk to a doctor to assess and get recommendations before treatment. Do the same here.

Trusted advisor doesn't need to be lawyer. Can be trusted professor.

No, you need someone who will represent YOUR interests both in public and private.

When the stakes are exceptionally high, don't ask for advice from someone paid by the agressor.

Negative feedback can be a net good for anyone, even if they don't like it in the moment, and even for conglomerate entities like a school. Petty bureaucratic admins abusing their authority to spite you are likely abusing it against others under their purview. Honestly if you feel you have an allegiance to the school there's an argument that it's your duty to oppose petty tyrants within it. Think of it as a service to the the ideal of the school.

And additionally a lawyer will help make him aware of alternatives he may not know about, and also give him warning as to what other strong arm tactics UW could do, and how to safeguard himself. It's truly a smart idea.

Also upvoting, as this is a valuable lesson as you head into a career: no company (nor school) cares about you more than they care about the organization. HR does not work for you and while the individuals may care for you personally, they will almost never act in "good faith".

Just another case of a business gradually feeling little respect for their customers.

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