University Bans Social Media, Wikipedia On Dorm WiFi

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Whoa, this sucks. Hey, this news isn't all bad, at least Northern Illinois University students can still access the [H]! ;)

Perhaps one of the most controversial of the terms is the restriction on political activities such as surveying, polling, material distribution, vote solicitation and organization or participation in meetings, rallies and demonstrations, among other activities. According to the policy, social media sites including Facebook, Twitter, Flickr, Pinterest, LinkedIn, and Foursquare are also unacceptable “unless associated with professional responsibilities.” However, students have reportedly been able to access social media. To top it off, illicit activity discovered during “routine monitoring” is grounds for an investigation.
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Ok, huffpo makes it make a lot more sense.

It's a click through for poorly behaved sites and malware laden sites that cut and pastes the AUP. The AUP happens to ban the use of university resources for political speech. Which is not uncommon because most universities are a business that are licensed as a non profit and are not permitted to engage in such activities without some severe legal and financial ramifications.

My guess is that you see this due to stupid employee tricks and now they need a credentialed click through portal so they can distinguish between students and employees. Possibly even emlpoyees on the clock vs. not on the clock.

Ditto the stupid employee tricks for social media sites, but mostly for productivity reasons.
 
Sure, but do they ban VPN's? That's all that really matters.

If you don't know how to set up a VPN (or use google), you should probably sign up for an introduction to computers course before you start clicking random links on social media anyway.
 
Kueller said:
Sure, but do they ban VPN's? That's all that really matters.

If you don't know how to set up a VPN (or use google), you should probably sign up for an introduction to computers course before you start clicking random links on social media anyway.
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We're talking about Northern Illinois students here, not exactly the deep end of the intellectual pool. Giving it the "old college try" means getting drunk and going to class instead of skipping it entirely.
 
Kueller, Universities typically are an Enterprise setup and normally would not allow a VPN out of their domain unless it was approved and that won't happen too often for personal use.
 
Gweenz said:
We're talking about Northern Illinois students here, not exactly the deep end of the intellectual pool. Giving it the "old college try" means getting drunk and going to class instead of skipping it entirely.
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They now have browser plugins that even a retarded monkey could install. Trust me, nothing they can do can restrict the internet access of college students. Try to restrict freedom and it will find a way. They tried to do that with file sharing programs when I was in college... but only blocked certain ports so we just changed them.

The only solace we can take from this is that the type of people who want to restrict access to the internet like this are always hugely out to lunch on technology. If they understood what they were blocking they probably wouldn't bother.

But seriously, if college students can't be trusted with this stuff how the hell are they going to deal with real life? They're just a few semesters away from that.
 
Social media should be banned on all college campus'. Anyone under the age of 21 should be prohibited from using any type of social media imo. To many ways to basically fuck up your life after entities troll through your social media life during interviews. Free Speech be damned, you arent working here after (input comment/picture made on facebook 2 years ago) thats demeaning to our customers/employees/etc. Course you can move into a field where you just dont want scumbags to find you, and now its pretty much too late.

Social Media is fucking retarded if you value any type of privacy.
But whatever...maybe you wont fuck up your future being a kid and making a joke, you can always apologize for it later on like everyone else does, and then.. its all good! lol
 
Quix said:
They now have browser plugins that even a retarded monkey could install. Trust me, nothing they can do can restrict the internet access of college students. Try to restrict freedom and it will find a way. They tried to do that with file sharing programs when I was in college... but only blocked certain ports so we just changed them.

The only solace we can take from this is that the type of people who want to restrict access to the internet like this are always hugely out to lunch on technology. If they understood what they were blocking they probably wouldn't bother.

But seriously, if college students can't be trusted with this stuff how the hell are they going to deal with real life? They're just a few semesters away from that.
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As I stated above, it really smells like policy targeted at employees (mostly), it's just that everyone is in one giant pile so their portal page logs who is going where.

Also, you'd be surprised what you can do to block file sharing. The reality of it is that the university doesn't care as long as the steps the student body has to take is sufficient to absolve the school from liability.
 
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