Community Advice
Okay, everybody. Here's the question I put before you all today. Did I go too far?
At the risk of exposing my identity online (which I've been pretty careful about, to this point), let me tell you that Yesterday was Enrollment day at the college I've gone back to. Online and other-form enrollment began at 8AM. I received numerous emails urging me to use online enrollment, as it was quicker, blah blah blah, all that stuff they always tell you. And like a sap, I believed them. So I got up early, to studiously follow their directions.
Their servers went down at 8:00 am, from an un-dedicated Denial-of-Service "attack"...really, just 3/4 of the student population trying to enroll all at the same time. When you're trying to get into a class with limited enrollment, but which you need in order to take classes in the fall...well, let's just say that the ONLY people who got into the classes were camped outside of the office door, on campus, two to five hours before-hand. Nobody else got in.
Well, obviously, this made me very, very angry. What kind of school urges me to enroll online, but then will not let me? Worst, there was no "feedback" button or anything of the kind. So I went and found the registrar email elsewhere, and wrote the following email:
Subject: Brilliant Fucking Job.
I sure am glad that you guys made sure you had a large enough server, and enough bandwith [sic], before you decided to allow simultaneous open enrollment. Yes, thank god I'm not getting a 503 error (too many simultaneous logins) 20 minutes into this, because EVERY FUCKING STUDENT IN THE COLLEGE IS TRYING DESPERATELY TO GET INTO THEIR CLASSES BEFORE THEY ARE FILLED UP.
This is a clusterfuck of monumental proportions. Your bloody website is timing out left and right. Wonderful job. And, way to redesign the fucking login THE DAY OF NEW ENROLLMENT, so it's all different than it was YESTERDAY when I came on SPECIFICALLY to prepare myself with the information I will need. Brilliant.
This is horrible. You guys have messed up so horrifically badly, that I am seriously thinking it would be better to just not attend your college, than have to fight with this dragon of a system. Fix this before Fall enrollment. Honestly, fix this now. Because this is terrible, and you should all feel shame over this.
I am disgusted.
Sincerely,
[Name]
[Student ID]
PS: Oh, good, and now I do not even have permission to access the enrollment service. WONDERFUL.
Today, I received a phone call.
I have been placed on Suspension, pending a review by the Threat Assessment Committee. (I am not allowed to attend this review. The persons in charge of this assessment have never met me. One of them spoke on the phone with me, today, for about 40 minutes, mostly about this email and my suspension. Professors are not invited. Classmates are not invited.)
Now, I immediately asked (and, not having a copy of the email in front of me at that time), "Why?" And this man, this 57 year old man, told me it was because "of your inappropriate language."
Seriously.
I cannot enroll in a class I need this summer, halting my academic progress and my advancement to a new career, because they didn't consider the needs of their server space or the prospect of staggered enrollment. That's a potential extra four months without employment in my newly chosen field. I am not the only one in this boat. Many of us have just been screwed by the system--some irrevocably screwed.
But I am the bad guy, because I said (let's recount, real quick)..."fucking" three times, and "clusterfuck" once. (And, I suppose, "god" once and "bloody" once.) Upon review of the FCC laws (just because), I note that I probably do fall outside the following clause: "The FCC has denied complaints in cases in which we determined the broadcast was not indecent based on the overall context of the programming." However, they also say:
"Obscene material is not protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution and cannot be broadcast at any time. The Supreme Court has established that, to be obscene, material must meet a three-pronged test:
*An average person, applying contemporary community standards, must find that the material, as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;
*The material must depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable law; and
*The material, taken as a whole, must lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. "
I would suppose that because my material was the very definition of political, and because it does not depict or describe any sexual material, I fail this test. As prurient describes lust, I would say I, in-fact, fail all three of the FCC's tests for obscenity.
On the other hand, their rules on profanity state: "The FCC has defined profanity as “including language so grossly offensive to members of the public who actually hear it as to amount to a nuisance.” " I may certainly fall under that provision, depending upon who is considered "members of the public". My parents? My grandparents? 4chan? Pretty subjective. Oh, he brought up vulgarity and pornography laws (which are applicable, under the original meaning of those laws), and I brought up the persecution of minorities via those same laws, and neither of us has convinced the other.
So, I guess, here's my question: Do three Fuckings and a Clusterfuck amount to enough profanity that I should be possible expelled from a college? Certainly not professional, but expulsible? Considering the facts surrounding the offense? When we do not consider the facts surrounding the offense?
What do you think, LJ?
At the risk of exposing my identity online (which I've been pretty careful about, to this point), let me tell you that Yesterday was Enrollment day at the college I've gone back to. Online and other-form enrollment began at 8AM. I received numerous emails urging me to use online enrollment, as it was quicker, blah blah blah, all that stuff they always tell you. And like a sap, I believed them. So I got up early, to studiously follow their directions.
Their servers went down at 8:00 am, from an un-dedicated Denial-of-Service "attack"...really, just 3/4 of the student population trying to enroll all at the same time. When you're trying to get into a class with limited enrollment, but which you need in order to take classes in the fall...well, let's just say that the ONLY people who got into the classes were camped outside of the office door, on campus, two to five hours before-hand. Nobody else got in.
Well, obviously, this made me very, very angry. What kind of school urges me to enroll online, but then will not let me? Worst, there was no "feedback" button or anything of the kind. So I went and found the registrar email elsewhere, and wrote the following email:
Subject: Brilliant Fucking Job.
I sure am glad that you guys made sure you had a large enough server, and enough bandwith [sic], before you decided to allow simultaneous open enrollment. Yes, thank god I'm not getting a 503 error (too many simultaneous logins) 20 minutes into this, because EVERY FUCKING STUDENT IN THE COLLEGE IS TRYING DESPERATELY TO GET INTO THEIR CLASSES BEFORE THEY ARE FILLED UP.
This is a clusterfuck of monumental proportions. Your bloody website is timing out left and right. Wonderful job. And, way to redesign the fucking login THE DAY OF NEW ENROLLMENT, so it's all different than it was YESTERDAY when I came on SPECIFICALLY to prepare myself with the information I will need. Brilliant.
This is horrible. You guys have messed up so horrifically badly, that I am seriously thinking it would be better to just not attend your college, than have to fight with this dragon of a system. Fix this before Fall enrollment. Honestly, fix this now. Because this is terrible, and you should all feel shame over this.
I am disgusted.
Sincerely,
[Name]
[Student ID]
PS: Oh, good, and now I do not even have permission to access the enrollment service. WONDERFUL.
Today, I received a phone call.
I have been placed on Suspension, pending a review by the Threat Assessment Committee. (I am not allowed to attend this review. The persons in charge of this assessment have never met me. One of them spoke on the phone with me, today, for about 40 minutes, mostly about this email and my suspension. Professors are not invited. Classmates are not invited.)
Now, I immediately asked (and, not having a copy of the email in front of me at that time), "Why?" And this man, this 57 year old man, told me it was because "of your inappropriate language."
Seriously.
I cannot enroll in a class I need this summer, halting my academic progress and my advancement to a new career, because they didn't consider the needs of their server space or the prospect of staggered enrollment. That's a potential extra four months without employment in my newly chosen field. I am not the only one in this boat. Many of us have just been screwed by the system--some irrevocably screwed.
But I am the bad guy, because I said (let's recount, real quick)..."fucking" three times, and "clusterfuck" once. (And, I suppose, "god" once and "bloody" once.) Upon review of the FCC laws (just because), I note that I probably do fall outside the following clause: "The FCC has denied complaints in cases in which we determined the broadcast was not indecent based on the overall context of the programming." However, they also say:
"Obscene material is not protected by the First Amendment to the Constitution and cannot be broadcast at any time. The Supreme Court has established that, to be obscene, material must meet a three-pronged test:
*An average person, applying contemporary community standards, must find that the material, as a whole, appeals to the prurient interest;
*The material must depict or describe, in a patently offensive way, sexual conduct specifically defined by applicable law; and
*The material, taken as a whole, must lack serious literary, artistic, political, or scientific value. "
I would suppose that because my material was the very definition of political, and because it does not depict or describe any sexual material, I fail this test. As prurient describes lust, I would say I, in-fact, fail all three of the FCC's tests for obscenity.
On the other hand, their rules on profanity state: "The FCC has defined profanity as “including language so grossly offensive to members of the public who actually hear it as to amount to a nuisance.” " I may certainly fall under that provision, depending upon who is considered "members of the public". My parents? My grandparents? 4chan? Pretty subjective. Oh, he brought up vulgarity and pornography laws (which are applicable, under the original meaning of those laws), and I brought up the persecution of minorities via those same laws, and neither of us has convinced the other.
So, I guess, here's my question: Do three Fuckings and a Clusterfuck amount to enough profanity that I should be possible expelled from a college? Certainly not professional, but expulsible? Considering the facts surrounding the offense? When we do not consider the facts surrounding the offense?
What do you think, LJ?