uwthrowaway

It seems similarly performative to remove them, especially in the context of the election/Zuckerberg's signalling. Yes, adding tampons to men's bathrooms was largely performative and less substantial, but the same applies to removing them.

UW has had some pretty bad issues (e.g. systems lab abuse [1], early-entrance programs [2]). Another program I was in had serious issues such as overworking and threatening student eligibility, such that almost all the leadership involved left for other universities. That was never reported more loudly out of fear of retaliation and sheer exhaustion of the students. That being said, it is a large university with many different actors and most of my experiences here have been positive.

[1] https://www.dailyuw.com/news/uw-allen-school-confirms-invest...

[2] https://www.dailyuw.com/news/six-students-accuse-robinson-ce...

The following has been added to the "Tampering and Abuse" section of the UW Registrar's Policies & Procedures page in the last day:

> Additionally, the creation of any service that enables any of the above behaviors is strictly forbidden and constitutes a violation of this policy.

Worth noting that the administrative code is probably more important, here's some relevant sections:

WAC Aiding, assisting, and attempting: https://app.leg.wa.gov/WAC/default.aspx?cite=478-121-113

WAC Computer abuses: https://app.leg.wa.gov/WAC/default.aspx?cite=478-121-117

Registrar before: https://web.archive.org/web/20241208123609/https://registrar...

Registrar after: https://web.archive.org/web/20250109203004/https://registrar...

I'd personally describe it as an attempt for two reasons, although reasonable minds can differ:

1. They made substantial progress towards a working tool with available code, before requesting permission from the school. That request was to enable parts of the site, not requesting permission to develop/release it publicly.

2. It is pretty clear to students that you aren't allowed to mess with any of the registration systems/process (e.g. trading/holding classes). Your analogy has a very reasonable question (are notesheets allowed) vs a policy which is made very clear.

A different analogy is creating a hidden device to cheat on exams, then asking the professor for the exam room's wifi password as to enable it it in the future. While the situation is not as clear-cut as the analogy, I hope it helps show my perspective.

Yeah, a small amount of "organic" mischief isn't bad IMO, but it's problematic on a larger scale.

UW cs student - most current cs students would still know that this would get you in trouble.

See: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42639478

UW student - see the "Tampering and Abuse" section of (https://registrar.washington.edu/registration/policies-proce...) which has been around for much longer and is well communicated with students.

I'm a uw cs student, it is made pretty clear that you're not supposed to trade spots or otherwise automate any part of the registration. Students typically know not to talk about this stuff.

While well-intentioned, if this was commonly used it would mess registration up even more by making the "constrained" classes valuable and would be filled up quickly by people who wouldn't take them.