When 19 Baruch College students tried to gain an edge in registering for classes through a customized computer script, they unknowingly violated the university’s computer policy.

Students designed the script, also called a robot, to run continuously until a space opened up in a particular section or course, said Christina Diggs, assistant director for student affairs. The students hoped the script would register them immediately when a space became available.

“Some scripts are more complex than others, depending on the abilities of the creator or user,” she said. “However, this is something that is available to those without expert knowledge of computer coding.”

Use of the script increased during the first week of classes, when many students attempted to change their course registrations, she said. University officials detected an unusually high volume of activity in the system, putting it at risk of shutting down entirely.

“The system administrator could see the exceptionally high number of requests – tens of thousands or more per student,” said Arthur Downing, the chief information officer at Baruch College.

At this point, the school took action, Diggs said.

“The IT staff then traced the activity back to specific users and forwarded that information to the office of the vice president for student affairs and enrollment management,” she said.

These tech-savvy students believed that by using this script to repeatedly check for class openings, they would secure seats in the most desired classes, Diggs said. But the method violated the university’s policies on “acceptable use of computer resources.”

According to Section 7 of the official policy, “Users may not install, use or develop programs intended to infiltrate or damage a CUNY Computer Resource, or which could reasonably be expected to cause, directly or indirectly, excessive strain or theft of confidential data on any computing facility.”

Although the students involved did not appear to have a malicious intent, the large amount of activity generated by these scripts caused “excessive strain” on the system, therefore violating the rules, Diggs said.

No one was trying to steal other students’ private information or corrupt the computer system. The students even signed in under their own names, according to a Feb. 4 article by The New York Times.

Ben Corpus, dean of students, said in the article that the university has not decided what the penalty will be for the students involved. He acknowledged the students involved were resourceful at “figuring out how to adapt a real-world strategy to their own goals.”

“We don’t want to see this harm their careers,” Corpus said. “If they can help us while they’re here, that would be very beneficial.”

Published on February 13, 2013 at 11:40 pm

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