Tufts Expelled a Student For Grade Hacking. She Claims Innocence (techcrunch.com) 344
An anonymous reader quotes TechCrunch: As she sat in the airport with a one-way ticket in her hand, Tiffany Filler wondered how she would pick up the pieces of her life, with tens of thousands of dollars in student debt and nothing to show for it. A day earlier, she was expelled from Tufts University veterinary school. As a Canadian, her visa was no longer valid and she was told by the school to leave the U.S. 'as soon as possible.' That night, her plane departed the U.S. for her native Toronto, leaving any prospect of her becoming a veterinarian behind. Filler, 24, was accused of an elaborate months-long scheme involving stealing and using university logins to break into the student records system, view answers, and alter her own and other students' grades.
The case Tufts presented seems compelling, if not entirely believable.
There's just one problem: In almost every instance that the school accused Filler of hacking, she was elsewhere with proof of her whereabouts or an eyewitness account and without the laptop she's accused of using. She has alibis: fellow students who testified to her whereabouts; photos with metadata putting her miles away at the time of the alleged hacks; and a sleep tracker that showed she was asleep during others. Tufts is either right or it expelled an innocent student on shoddy evidence four months before she was set to graduate.
The case Tufts presented seems compelling, if not entirely believable.
There's just one problem: In almost every instance that the school accused Filler of hacking, she was elsewhere with proof of her whereabouts or an eyewitness account and without the laptop she's accused of using. She has alibis: fellow students who testified to her whereabouts; photos with metadata putting her miles away at the time of the alleged hacks; and a sleep tracker that showed she was asleep during others. Tufts is either right or it expelled an innocent student on shoddy evidence four months before she was set to graduate.
Sue the fuck out of the school. (Score:4, Insightful)
Hire a lawyer and sue the fuck out the school.
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Well, she's in CANADA, which a cursory READING might tell you... also she's penniless in debt and has no earning potential now, things required to hire lawyers and prove her case, obtain justice. You know, the monied justice problem?
Are you not familiar with the way America's legal system actually works? It's gambling. What you personally believe based on a single half-assed article about it just proves uninformed opines are the rule, not the exception.
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Well, she's in CANADA
Yes, she is now. Let me guess, you think this all happened in an afternoon: allegation, decision, cancellation, and on a flight out of the country. No way that would be drawn out for weeks right?
also she's penniless in debt and has no earning potential now, things required to hire lawyers and prove her case, obtain justice. You know, the monied justice problem?
Indeed she is. So she a) has nothing to lose, and b) has a lot to gain if she were capable of winning. Are you not familiar with the way America's legal system actually works? It's gambling. When you have nothing to lose, and have a solid case your odds are far better than that of the house.
What you personally believe based on a single half-assed article about it just proves uninformed opines are the rule, not the exception.
I personally played the d
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I think it's a lot worse for her than you are presupposing. Tuft's is a school reasonably well connected politically. Cases that should be "open and shut" against politically well connected parties have a long history of often coming to extremely peculiar verdicts. I'm not sure that it's actually getting worse in recent years, or whether we're just hearing about more of them, but I seem to hear about several every month. (Of course, sometimes it's the same one repeatedly, but...)
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She's Canadian, Canadians aren't used to suing, especially in another country when broke.
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She's Canadian, Canadians aren't used to suing, especially in another country when broke.
Canadians are a lot of things, but pushovers that fold in the face of a life altering event when they have a solid case in their favour is not one of them. This isn't a case of being American or not. The legal system exists for exactly this reason, and not for reasons Americans often use it for. The fact we got a sob story instead doesn't speak in her favour, Canadian or not.
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Perhaps, you still have the being broke and suing in another country handicaps. It did occur to me after posting that this publicity thing might be a strategic move to enable making it easier to find a lawyer who is willing to work pro bono or on contingency. Lawyers like publicity, at least if they think they can win publicly.
Inconclusive Alibis (Score:2)
None of that evidence proves that she didn't get a friend to hack into the system, look at the answers, and change her grades for her. Note that other students' grades were also changed; there was likely a "psst, pay me $500 and I'll give you better grades" type of scheme going on here.
If it's her first cheating offense, her completion of the courses in question should be vacated and she should just be forced to redo them. Zero tolerance policies of expulsion on first offense go against the point of educati
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Likewise, we've seen no evidence that she did anything at all wrong.
There is some evidence (Score:4, Interesting)
The fact her grades were changed (along with others) is evidence. Her laptop *was* used for some of this hacking, even she is not denying this.
I honestly don't know to believe her or not; lots of the alibi material also could be rigged.
At the very least there should be an investigation that would let her return if they find someone else did it. But to say there is no evidence, is really going too far the other way.
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On the other hand, a RAT was found on her laptop. That and otherwise we would have to believe that she was sophisticated enough at computer security to manage all that hacking, but not enough to know she shouldn't do it on her own laptop connected to the school's LAN.
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The fact her grades were changed (along with others) is evidence. Her laptop *was* used for some of this hacking, even she is not denying this.
I honestly don't know to believe her or not; lots of the alibi material also could be rigged.
At the very least there should be an investigation that would let her return if they find someone else did it. But to say there is no evidence, is really going too far the other way.
The evidence in the article clearly point to some other actor using her as a scapegoat. The idea that she did this given the evidence being presented is extremely unlikely. That being said, perhaps we don't know all the facts. But given the presented facts, you would have to be a fool to think that it points at her. The quotes from the school officials demonstrates a clear lack of understanding about technical matters. And the idea that a university IT department has any sort of competency in computer
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Likewise, we've seen no evidence that she did anything at all wrong.
Why should we ? It's a private matter, and we are not part of this case in one way or the other.
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Currently, I don't expect to see any evidence. Neither can anyone here who wants to declare her guilty.
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I had no idea Tufts was now the arbiter of public opinion. When did that happen?
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Yes, I think it's fair to say SOMEBODY accessed the answers. But it is kinda important WHO did it.
Re:Inconclusive Alibis (Score:4, Insightful)
None of that evidence proves that she didn't get a friend to hack into the system, look at the answers, and change her grades for her.
This is unfalsifiable. Nothing could prove that short of omniscience.
Note that other students' grades were also changed; there was likely a "psst, pay me $500 and I'll give you better grades" type of scheme going on here.
That's only the most obvious possibility. Here's another one: The hacker is amongst that group. He/she possesses MAC address+name combinations for all of those people and adjusted all of their grades in order to create uncertainty about which of them was the hacker. Cloning MAC addresses was one of many tactics the hacker used, but the methods used by the school to track the hacker happened to seize upon that particular countermeasure.
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They just have the MAC address to identify her machine? No forensics on the laptop itself? That is crazy. MAC address changes are often as simple as running a single command as root. Finding the MAC address of a particular machine is a bit harder, not is that hard either if you are on-site.
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They just have the MAC address to identify her machine? No forensics on the laptop itself? That is crazy. MAC address changes are often as simple as running a single command as root. Finding the MAC address of a particular machine is a bit harder, not is that hard either if you are on-site.
Everyone here knows how to spoof a layer 2 address. However, why would the school have forensic access to her PC? The most likely case is that it’s privately owned, and thus they have no control over it.
They might, however, have been able to identify the specific port used by the MAC address and might know that it links to her dorm room (I didn’t read the article, only the summary). That sort of thing reduces the suspect pool significantly - toss in a few other clues and they might have a prepon
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They just have the MAC address to identify her machine? No forensics on the laptop itself? That is crazy. MAC address changes are often as simple as running a single command as root. Finding the MAC address of a particular machine is a bit harder, not is that hard either if you are on-site.
Everyone here knows how to spoof a layer 2 address. However, why would the school have forensic access to her PC? The most likely case is that it’s privately owned, and thus they have no control over it.
They might, however, have been able to identify the specific port used by the MAC address and might know that it links to her dorm room (I didn’t read the article, only the summary). That sort of thing reduces the suspect pool significantly - toss in a few other clues and they might have a preponderance of evidence. We simply don’t know, as they haven’t (and won’t outside a court of law) released their version of events.
She lived off campus and the landlord was never contacted by the school. Unless her ISP was contacted, there was no way for them to know enough to even accuse her. They didn't even know her IP address. And the school officials clearly don't understand computer forensics as they seem to think that editing a photo is the same as spoofing the cryptographic signatures on a picture.
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Re: Inconclusive Alibis (Score:2)
Don't rule out that she may be in conflict with some person in management, possibly that she denied someone sexual favors. It has happened before and it's really making things harder to prove with word against word and tis is the way she was punished for not bending over.
IT security generally sucks (Score:4, Insightful)
In many cases security at an academic institute is a springboard to private as well as a wasteland of people without talent. On the other hand, a smart hacker would also find ways of altering access logs or create an alibi.
weird. (Score:5, Insightful)
As it is, if somebody really knows how to crack, then they would purposely change their mac (easy enough to do). I would be curious about her relationship to the other grades that changed.
Re:weird. (Score:5, Interesting)
I think the fact that she got expelled proves her innocence. If she could hack the system, she would have deleted that.
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Tufts has the only veterinary program in New England.
Changing a MAC may not be enough to gain access to a local network. wi-fi access can also require a local software token to register the host, and that approach is increasingly common place at universities where theft of wifi access by visitors or students who don't care to have illegal activity tracked is commonplace.
Re:weird. (Score:5, Interesting)
Changing a MAC may not be enough to gain access to a local network. wi-fi access can also require a local software token to register the host,
From the article: "Tufts said she stole a librarian’s password to assign a mysteriously created user account, “Scott Shaw,” with a higher level of system and network access."
Apparently librarian has the power to create network administration accounts so I suspect we're not dealing with a paragon of information security here. It would be mighty interesting to see all the MAC address logs from all the on-campus wi-fi routers and see if this MAC address was ever observed being in two places at once.
The times the fitness tracker recorded her being asleep are meaningless - anyone could've been wearing it. But the times she was being physically observed, and particularly the instance of physically observed + not on computer are intriguing. It would also be interesting to profile the interaction of the times she was being physically observed versus the interactions taking place in the "hacking". If you're being physically observed to create an alibi, then you're using a script to do your hacking in the background and that's generally going to look much less stochastic than live human interaction.
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Apparently librarian has the power to create network administration accounts so I suspect we're not dealing with a paragon of information security here.
We're talking about an academic institution here. There's no higher authority than that of the librarian. I'm not even being funny here, I once saw the Chancellor of the IT school at our university walk through the library talking to a local politician (opposition at the time), and they got shushed by the librarian, apologised and left.
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Your point? She's Canadian. Shouldn't have been a problem attending there [canadianve...arians.net].
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Am I understanding that page correctly? Are there only 5 veterinary programs in Canada?
Short timeline, failsafe (Score:4, Interesting)
The article is making it sound sad that she only had 4 months left on her degree. That probably caused Tufts to have to act sooner. Expelling her is probably significantly easier than revoking her degree if issued. If she was a first year, they probably could have taken more time.
But now, if she is later exonerated, they can let her back in for her last set of classes a year late.
Huh? (Score:2)
"Date stamps are easy to edit," said Knoll. "In fact, the photos you shared with me clearly include an 'edit' button in the upper corner for this exact purpose," she wrote, referring to the iPhone software's native photo editing feature. "Why wait until after you'd been informed that you were going to be expelled to show me months' old photos?" she said.
Why show the photos any earlier? It sounds like she didn't know she would be expelled until she was accused of this hacking. What did this genius expect? That Filler would just walk up randomly to people to share a photo of her on a weekend trip? I mean, would that not be MORE suspicious? "Excuse me, just in case you might in the future accuse me of hacking the university computers last weekend I thought I'd show photographic evidence I was out of town."
I thought these people worked at a school.
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You are making a lot of assumptions here, not the least of which is that they determined the punishment before levying the charge. Just for a second entertain the possibility the university staff aren't all idiots.
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You are making a lot of assumptions here, not the least of which is that they determined the punishment before levying the charge. Just for a second entertain the possibility the university staff aren't all idiots.
Actually I think that's a very small assumption, cheating on an exam is a big offense. Hacking school systems to cheat? Maybe you can get away with it at 14 but at 24 I'd say that's a pretty much automatic expulsion. It's more like "do we have enough evidence to prosecute" level of offense.
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If they don't want to be taken for idiots then perhaps they could open up a bit on what really happened. It sounds like the student was called to answer for her supposed crimes while not given any time to build a defense. She probably forgot about the weekend trip until she dug into her schedule for the months prior. Do you remember where you spent every weekend for the past year? When she did bring up evidence in her defense then they dismissed it as something she likely doctored.
This looks like a kang
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This looks like a kangaroo court.
At a college? We can't have that!!!???
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If they don't want to be taken for idiots then perhaps they could open up a bit on what really happened.
Why? Answering to the court of public opinion is only likely to get them in trouble should they ever have to answer to an actual court. The university doesn't own anyone a comment on someone's sob story to the media.
It sounds like the student was called to answer for her supposed crimes while not given any time to build a defense.
I've been on the university side of this discussion and I call bullshit. Expulsion is no swift matter, and a claim like this most definitely will have gone through multiple levels of escalation over months.
She probably forgot about the weekend trip until she dug into her schedule for the months prior. Do you remember where you spent every weekend for the past year? When she did bring up evidence in her defense then they dismissed it as something she likely doctored.
Oh? Weren't you just saying the university should open up on what "really" happened? It so
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The instant she was expelled, her student visa went POOF. She HAD to leave
But lets look at the other side, what the university alleges is multiple felonies. If they're so sure she did it, why didn't they report these serious crimes to law enforcement?
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Because the publicity for a student being convicted of multiple felonies is _worse_ than the publicity for expelling her. Also, the standard of proof for felony convictions is much higher. A student at a disciplinary hearing does not have the USA's constitutional protections against self incrimination, and does not have the same "beyond a reasonable doubt" standard of proof. It's faster, and it is normally _much_ cheaper to settle internally.
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it's easier and faster to kick some out for cheating vs makeing criminal case out of it. and what if the case is lost due bad evidence or statements that make a very good case for the student to sue the school?
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If those what ifs are weighing on their minds, perhaps they shouldn't have expelled her. If they are really sure they're right, they should consider reporting the crimes to law enforcement a good way to make sure they don't get wrongly sued.
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Says the AC who wants the accused to prove a negative.
What this tells us, unless you believe that the media would totally miss that law enforcement was notified, is that the university isn't THAT sure they have the right person.
Alibi proves her guilt. (Score:2)
Nobody who is innocent has an alibi ready to go. Real people in the real world don't have documentation putting them elsewhere most of the time because they don't expect to need it. People who have that documentation ready to go, especially for a large number of incidents, made sure they'd have it to prove their innocence which means they aren't innocent at all.
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I dunno, if you use an Android phone with Google maps, by default, you can probably retrieve detailed info about your location and movements unless you've turned that feature off. I happened to have it on for several years, which turned out to be lucky if unintentional, as I used it to successfully defend myself in a legal matter. I could show times and places on a series of maps Google had tracking my phone checking in that were incompatible with the crazy claims of somebody accusing me of some totally irr
Comment removed (Score:4, Insightful)
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Or maybe she is a maniac instagrammer so she has pictures of every hour of her life?
Re:Alibi proves her guilt. (Score:4, Insightful)
All of these statements lead me to believe you have not interacted with a college-age human in quite some time.
You see, we have these things that we call 'smartphones' now, that are really just sophisticated tracking devices that log our exact whereabouts down to the meter, chronicle every interaction we have with other people via online services, and tag every photo we take with them with timestamps and geographic coordinates. From the moment they get one, real people in the real world keep these devices on their person or close to hand for almost every waking moment of their lives, so much so that not having verifiable documentation of exactly where you were, what you were doing, and when you were doing it is the more unusual scenario.
That said, none of this necessarily implies this person is innocent; my only point is that having an alibi ready to go has been the default state of the smartphone-carrying world for roughly a decade now.
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Real people in the real world don't have documentation putting them elsewhere most of the time because they don't expect to need it.
Meh, if you have the Facebook app they probably know more about where you've been than you do.
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Nobody who is innocent has an alibi ready to go. Real people in the real world don't have documentation putting them elsewhere most of the time because they don't expect to need it. People who have that documentation ready to go, especially for a large number of incidents, made sure they'd have it to prove their innocence which means they aren't innocent at all.
I could easily produce lots of data to support alibis that I didn't previously know I needed, because I log lots of my life. Google Maps tracks my phone's location all the time, and it's basically never further from me than the next room. I use a sleep tracker, and that data is logged to Fitbit. What I eat is also logged to Fitbit, with timestamps. Same for my workouts. My meditation sessions are logged by Headspace. My work is logged in EMACS org mode, down to a resolution of a few minutes... and much
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So you're saying if she floats she's a witch and we kill her, but if she drowns she's innocent?
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Let us know if you get better.
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Mmmmm, I disagree.
Carry a cellphone and chances are you can account for most of your movements during a typical day. If you use credit cards then you have another nearly unimpeachable set of data points to track your whereabouts at specific times.
I also don't recall the article stating that she had an alibi "ready to go". Where did that idea or claim come from?
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If so
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"hard evidence"
This is the dumbest possible thing you could say on this topic, in the digital era.
Presumption of Innocence (Score:4, Insightful)
Really? I'm pretty sure the last few years has shown for universities it is "guilty until sentenced - maybe we'll revisit the evidence in a year or two,after your life is ruined".
Referred to the FBI. (Score:4, Insightful)
Tufts is either right or it expelled an innocent student ...
This is why tertiary institutions shouldn't be allowed to act as the police. I realize, in this case, that much of the behaviour relates to academic integrity but the case should have been referred to the FBI.
Also, she should sue for defamation and loss of income.
What everyone is missing (Score:2)
The university's side is not told here. The university will not reveal information to TechCrunch. So all we have here is the expelled student's version of events. It would be very strange indeed if it didn't suggest her innocence when she's the only person telling the story.
Maybe she was framed (Score:2)
Maybe she was framed. You gotta admit it would be a great way to get rid of her.
Yes, it would take a pretty motivated person to do something like this, but I've known people who wouldn't be above this kind of behavior if they had the skills to pull it off.
Twins? (Score:2)
"It's never twins." - Sherlock
Donation? (Score:3, Interesting)
I'd like her to sue Tufts, and I'd donate $50 towards that.
Innocent until proven guilty. (Score:4, Interesting)
Isn't that a "Right" down there in the Excited States?
Or does that not apply to Colleges and Universities?
It's a shame she doesn't have the money to fight this, or a decent lawyer could likely get her a HUGE settlement, with compensation for everything she has to endure over all this B.S.
Looks like she'll be suffering under the (potentially) false accusations (and summary conviction) op these offenses against the institution.
I'd just like to know: Just how much evidence contrary to the accusation does she need to be exonerated, or is she just doomed?
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Indeed. She may have been selected as the scapegoat pretty early in the scheme. Or she could be guilty. But if she was framed, this does not sound like it required more than intermediate hacking skills, if that.
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Or he does know that FB and Google can't see your MAC, which is why he said it wasn't legit.
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With IP6 they can ...
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Not if you use even an ordinary router with NAT. This remains one of the compelling reasons to use NAT, the level of visibility and exposure with an externally exposed IP address of any sort is much higher. There's less chance of a scan randomly detecting an IP address with IPv6, but exposing your IPv6 addresses directly to the Internet means that you're reliant on much higher levels of firewall protection and integration than with even a simple NAT setup. There is no reason to use IPv6 in any home environm
With IP6 your IPS controls you local sub net range (Score:2)
With IP6 your IPS controls you local sub net range unless you use nat. and with an laptop that goes from hot-spot to hot-spot will pick up different ip's at each one.
Re:Go apply for another school then (Score:5, Insightful)
No college is going to accept credits transfered by somebody expelled for cheating. If she's lucky, the might accept some of the credits where there's no dispute of the accuracy, but colleges can't afford to accept transfers that would harm their accreditation.
It does sound like something is fishy here. Either the college is wrong or somebody used her device to change the grades for her while she was away from the device. Or there was some sort of massive error.
And people wonder why so many of us think that colleges shouldn't be responsible for handling sexual assault allegations.
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What's fishy is why is a Canadian spending money to go to the US for veterinary school? Canada doesn't have veterinary schools?
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Vet schools are hard to get into. Canada has six, IIRC.
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I was quite surprised how many of my sons classmates were planning on going to university in the States. Some had scholarships of some type. Anyways it is not that uncommon.
Re:I do not understand this (Score:5, Informative)
News for nerds because:
1. School
2. Grades
3. Computers
4. Alleged hacking
5. Law
You really must be new here, most of those subjects are very nerdy.
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"That's right. Because an iPhone has curves around all edges for your comfort. And comes in a wide variety of fashionable colors..."
grand larceny for taking the cash needs to go cour (Score:2)
grand larceny for taking the cash needs to go court
Re:They got her money (Score:4, Informative)
If she files a suit or not is the key to finding out what actually happened.
That's easy to say, but not so easy to do, particularly when you're now stuck in another country.
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If she had an alibi for every event they claim she was part of, then that in itself is suspicious. Who would have an alibi for every random time that somebody tried to frame you for something?
If someone hacked her laptop and was using it to hack the grades while she was sleeping or away, then it's pretty likely that she had an alibi for every occurrence - I can document every time I'm sleeping with my smart watch and my smart-thermostat motion sensors. Every time I leave the house, it's captured on the cloud cam in the garage, as well as the camera at the corner gas station that I have to pass to leave the neighborhood. My car is pretty new, so I wouldn't be surprised if it was tracking me throu
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A what? There's no prize for guessing how much student debt you racked up.
Re:Don't go to college, it's a waste of time & (Score:5, Insightful)
boycott going to college.
Easier said than done. Not going to college will by extension mean not being able to go to medical school, engineering school, and eliminate oneself from many occupations which require post-baccalaureate degrees.
With the Internet nowadays, you can learn about ANYTHING you want, for free.
No you can't. Its littered with paywalls, required texts, and even online college lectures aren't available for all the courses required to graduate.
There's a difference between saying "debt slavery for multiple decades does not make college a worthwhile endeavor" and saying "college is a waste of time (although for some people, it can be)".
Re:Don't go to college, it's a waste of time & (Score:5, Interesting)
You can learn some things for free. Others, like being a veterinarian? No only is there a significant amount of hands-on experience, but you also have to know whether you are physiologically capable of working with hurt animals.
Speaking for myself... in the Army, I was once attached to Engineering Battalion for a while. After an industrial accident (80s, Communist country) I had to help in containing and suppressing a serious fire, and getting some hurt people to a field hospital (to this day I suspect it was a field hospital only because they wanted to keep the extent of the casualties secret)
Guess what. I was fine fighting the fires, I was fine looking at cremated bodies and smelling cooked human, and I was fine carrying and driving badly hurt people. But when they asked me to help during cleaning the wounds, by the second patient, the nurse told me to get lost before I puked on his patients. I went away, I sat down, and I must have passed out, because I lost a quarter hour.
You do not want to waste months studying, and then realize that you lose your composure working deep in someone or something's body. I also I doubt you can practice medicine, even veterinary medicine without a degree.
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Also, speaking as someone who in College has busted cheaters and got them expelled: cheaters often work in groups. We once caught someone who had made his girlfriend attend an early exam, take her copy of the final out, and give it to him, so he would have an advantage for the later exam that used the same questions.
The girl was good looking enough so that we, the TAs, noticed that we had not seen her before, wondered whose section she was in, and counted the exams. Three people got expelled - the cheater, his girlfriend, and the friend who worked on the quiz. Yes, they were stupid enough to try to turn the copy she had taken from the first exam... not realizing that every quiz had its unique binary id on each page, spelled with dots and spaces.
So my guess?
If the university is secure enough to kick her out her without fearing a lawsuit, they figured out that someone was doing it for her, which is why she has such solid alibis, and she refused to rat him out. These things are not handled lightly.
Re:Don't go to college, it's a waste of time & (Score:4, Interesting)
Worked in the physical therapy department of an acute care hospital for a while. Every summer we'd get a few folks volunteering to get their hours in to apply to go to PT school (easier to get into med school - similar pre-reqs, far fewer seats per year).
Every year I'd take 'em into the whirlpool room to work on a burn victim, or some poor old stroked out person iwth massive bed sores, or someone about to loose a leg from diabetic ulcers and complications thereof...
And every year one or two of 'em would quit and change majors....
Re: unless you want to pursue a profession (Score:3)
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Not really. It's hard enough to sue a large entity that has an active legal department when you are a citizen of the same country. It's really really hard to do so when you are a citizen of a different country and you aren't even a resident here. Her student visa went *poof* as soon as she was formally expelled, so she had to go home already. So she is in another country, unemployed, and the proud owner of a five figure debt, Not suing doesn't really say anything about the potential merits of a suit.
different country may let her not pay back loans w (Score:2)
different country may let her not pay back loans or little recorce or bankruptcy!!!!
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Perhaps. Not sure how that works.
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And I'm pointing out that we cannot really read anything into her NOT filing suit. So, the or not part of your statement tells us nothing.
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Your logic was fuzzy, I dusted it off for you. You mad?
I provided several good reasons why the or not clause was meaningless.
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Actually, I'm not giving her version of events a great deal of credence. But I trust it over the word of an arbitrary bureaucracy that acted to prevent official records from happening. Even then, I'd only trust the result somewhat, as those "official records" seem to generally and unaccountably always favor the bureaucracy. They need to be open an verifiable, or sealed at the request of the accused, before I'll trust them.
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I guess you missed the part about being unemployed and the proud owner of a five figure debt? Also, since the suit would be in the U.S., she would have to hire an American lawyer, from Canada, with no money.
Canada may save her form haveing to payup or (Score:3)
Canada may save her form having to payup or at least have an easier time of getting out of it / under the law.
Easier bankruptcy and lower max Garnishments %
http://canadastudentdebt.ca/cs... [canadastudentdebt.ca]
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Give it a try. Find a lawyer in another country that will represent you for free using only the telephone.
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After this level of press coverage? People are probably tracking her down now. The publicity might pay huge dividends for whatever law firm does the job. This on top of a contingency would be a huge payoff.
Re:They got her money (Score:5, Informative)
Exactly this. The university is constrained by FERPA in terms of the information it can release, even in cases of academic misconduct. If the evidence that Ms. Filler claims to have never seen includes other students' grades or academic records, then it will require a subpoena for the university to produce it.
One thing in particular strike me as questionable. From the article:
Her insinuation that she was called into an ethics and grievance meeting of eight senior academics without advance notification doesn't pass the smell test. Having been personally involved in cases of academic misconduct at a private university, I assume that Tufts has a specific internal procedure that must be followed in cases like this. A student accused of cheating is first presented with the charges, and a hearing date is set at which the student answers those charges with evidence and testimony of their own. I would bet that Tufts can easily provide documentation that she was indeed notified well in advance of the hearing.
Contrary to what the Techcrunch article implies, faculty and staff are not going to accuse a student of such egregious academic misconduct without being very sure of their evidence, and being very careful to document that they followed their own internal procedures. Universities constantly deal with accusations of student cheating, and with students' parents who hire attorneys who threaten to sue the school. Holding a "surprise" hearing would be an invitation to a lawsuit, which Tuft's own internal attorneys would never allow.
Ms. Filler has the right to file suit against Tufts. What puzzles me is that she did not retain an attorney in this matter long ago. The initial accusations were made months before her expulsion. Or ... what if she did hire a lawyer, got nowhere given the evidence against her, and didn't tell Techcrunch?
She is now presenting her case to the court of public opinion, which may get her some offers of pro bono legal assistance. The question is whether such assistance will lead to any relief for her, once other people learn more from Tufts' side of the story.
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Saying that someone already in debt should automatically hire a lawyer when being told of an on-going investigation that she doesn't know the details of strikes me as a bit absurd. When I was in school I *wasn't* in debt, and I would still have been extremely reluctant to hire a lawyer. I would expect that the "investigation" would find that I was innocent, so why should I burden myself with debt. I generally trusted the authorities to "do the right thing".
If you think she should have automatically hired
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You are very definitely projecting. My family was about as far from wealthy as you can imagine. Fortunately, an engineering degree lets you pay off student loans pretty quickly.
But put it this way - if I had been accu
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I agree that things sound pretty fishy in her account. If all that was done to her, she would probably have a solid case and would probably sue for damages as well. But it sounds far more likely that there is solid evidence and procedures were followed. That still does not mean she is guilty and she could just remember things wrongly. She could also have been framed. One possibility is that those changing the grades got wind of an investigation and were looking for a scapegoat and she qualified. If you want
Account sounds fishy (Score:2)
Her insinuation that she was called into an ethics and grievance meeting of eight senior academics without advance notification doesn't pass the smell test.
Agreed. Where I work the discipline process is well scripted and students are given multiple opportunities to explain the evidence against them all with advance notice. Also, her claim that she is "guilty until proven innocent" is also false.
There is a preponderance of evidence apparently proving that she is guilty so yes, she does need to explain how this evidence does not imply that she is guilty. The most serious evidence is that her grades were improved using her laptop. It is possible that her lapt
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I think you're wrong when you say "...or she's got a very winnable lawsuit...". Courts have been coming to a lot of very strange decisions recently. The word "corrupt" often seems just one step from being proven. Why the hell should "round cornered rectangles" be copyrightable, when the damn things were used back in the 1940's by large numbers of people, and probably date back before the typewriter, to pick just one very strange decision.
Having what *should* be an airtight case doesn't mean anything when
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There are some round here (rtb61 springs to mind) that appear to have several. Maybe they could donate some of their spares?
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