<story><title>Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/24/colleges-are-turning-students-phones-into-surveillance-machines-tracking-locations-hundreds-thousands/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mod50ack</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a college student myself (my university, as far as I&amp;#x27;m aware, has no system such as this). As far as I&amp;#x27;m concerned, it&amp;#x27;s both an insidious creep of social-credit policy and a gross invasion of student privacy. It treats us as children rather than as the adults we are, and seems to me to be a sign of the re-infantalization of colleges. Many generations ago, when the age of majority was for the most part higher, colleges acted in loco parentis for their minor undergraduates. It was during the twentieth century that college students came to be recognized as real adults. But now it seems that the coddling has in many ways increased, and some find it fit again, as one sees here, to surveil us like children.&lt;p&gt;Further, while there have been obvious benefits of technological advancement, they have in large part erased informal procedures and social understanding in favor of a rigid and unforgiving process. For example, my assignments are now largely due at midnight, at a very particular second: submit a nanosecond late at your own penalty. Whereas in the past the common practice of most professors would be along the lines of &amp;quot;get it in my mailbox by 4 p.m.&amp;quot;, or something like that, but with the informal understanding that at 4:00:00.0...1, the door of the mailbox would not close and chop off your hand. And exceptions to rules were easier to get before the arbiter of the rules became a severe and unfeeling one.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>knzhou</author><text>&amp;gt; For example, my assignments are now largely due at midnight, at a very particular second: submit a nanosecond late at your own penalty.&lt;p&gt;From the instructor&amp;#x27;s point of view, there&amp;#x27;s no winning here -- there will always be a cutoff, and &lt;i&gt;any&lt;/i&gt; position of it will lead to complaints. Even for an informal system, there&amp;#x27;s always a last person allowed in, and hence a cutoff.&lt;p&gt;If you have a good reason for an extension, you can still get it. But there&amp;#x27;s no reason anybody needs, specifically, the extra second after a formal deadline. If the deadline were moved to a second after midnight, you would try to submit two seconds after midnight and complain, and so on. (I mean, why do you think deadlines are at midnight in the first place? Because in-person collection would stop working at 5 PM, leading to complaints, so deadlines were extended to midnight to let people work at night.)&lt;p&gt;This is pointless slippage, and the resolution from the student side is so easy. Just pretend every deadline is 5 minutes earlier than it actually is, and you&amp;#x27;ll never have problems.</text></comment>
<story><title>Colleges are turning students’ phones into surveillance machines</title><url>https://www.washingtonpost.com/technology/2019/12/24/colleges-are-turning-students-phones-into-surveillance-machines-tracking-locations-hundreds-thousands/</url></story><parent_chain><item><author>mod50ack</author><text>I&amp;#x27;m a college student myself (my university, as far as I&amp;#x27;m aware, has no system such as this). As far as I&amp;#x27;m concerned, it&amp;#x27;s both an insidious creep of social-credit policy and a gross invasion of student privacy. It treats us as children rather than as the adults we are, and seems to me to be a sign of the re-infantalization of colleges. Many generations ago, when the age of majority was for the most part higher, colleges acted in loco parentis for their minor undergraduates. It was during the twentieth century that college students came to be recognized as real adults. But now it seems that the coddling has in many ways increased, and some find it fit again, as one sees here, to surveil us like children.&lt;p&gt;Further, while there have been obvious benefits of technological advancement, they have in large part erased informal procedures and social understanding in favor of a rigid and unforgiving process. For example, my assignments are now largely due at midnight, at a very particular second: submit a nanosecond late at your own penalty. Whereas in the past the common practice of most professors would be along the lines of &amp;quot;get it in my mailbox by 4 p.m.&amp;quot;, or something like that, but with the informal understanding that at 4:00:00.0...1, the door of the mailbox would not close and chop off your hand. And exceptions to rules were easier to get before the arbiter of the rules became a severe and unfeeling one.</text></item></parent_chain><comment><author>threatofrain</author><text>I don&amp;#x27;t think those informal understandings should stay so informal. If it&amp;#x27;s the fact that having your paper due by 4:20 is fine, then let it be 4:20, although the midnight deadline is likely something most people wouldn&amp;#x27;t do if they had to collect submissions in person, and so in this scenario we have automation possibly enabling more flexibility in student schedules. If students need extra room to pass the bar and it is a meaningful relaxation of rules, then let it be known so that the matter can be studied.&lt;p&gt;Why? Because empathy at scale works in ways which breeds hostility among groups and it creates an unhealthy incentive to compete over a teacher; it&amp;#x27;s not really reasonable to expect people to be immune to race or class or sex. Further, if the rules are strict then people need to know rather than _some_ people getting the discretionary treatment and others not.</text></comment>