Quote :

"One of the most fundamental rights we have in the United States is the right to privacy. It is this right to privacy that separates America from the tyrannical governments of the world like North Korea. When this privacy is unjustly violated, the rights of those individuals have been stripped from them without any due process. The joint decision by the Office of Student Conduct and University Housing to acquire and use digital photography for punitive reasons has violated our privacy as students."

http://www.technicianonline.com/story.php?id=012641


First, the comparison to N. Korea is a bit outrageous. Secondly, YOU HAVE NO RIGHT TO PRIVACY WHEN YOU POST ANYTHING TO A PUBLIC FORUM.

Why is this an issue? You can blame the administration for using the pictures for punitive damages, but using that excuse coupled with a right to privacy is ridiculous! I want my right to privacy which is why I don't run naked through a public street. Once I do that, it's not private anymore.

I didn't think that this was all that difficult.

And believe me, the RA who turned them in needs to be ousted from the university and live in the woods for the rest of his/her life for being pathetic. But for those argue that you have a right to privacy to anything posted on a public forum needs to... well STFU.

[Edited on November 10, 2005 at 12:12 PM. Reason : link]

11/10/2005 12:08:07 PM

Would you post the link to this column? I'd like to read it.

11/10/2005 12:09:42 PM

Quote :

"It is hard to determine where the pictures were taken, when the pictures were taken and if the pictures are even valid. In fact, in court these pictures would be circumstantial evidence at best. If this is the only evidence against them, they should be found innocent of the erroneous charges."

First, it ain't court. It's school rules (I'm just going by the book. I drank in residence halls too but was never dumb enough to get caught).

Secondly, you can reproduce the exact situation where these pictures were taken. It wouldn't be circumstantial. Photos are HARD EVIDENCE (check out a law book and don't venture to law school).

[Edited on November 10, 2005 at 12:15 PM. Reason : .]

11/10/2005 12:12:10 PM

Quote :

"I hope students will stand by me and not let North Carolina State University turn into a chapter of the novel 1984."

Christ. Let's yell a little louder.

11/10/2005 12:14:14 PM

But it is all right, everything is all right, the struggle is finished. We have won the victory over ourselves. We love Paul Cousins.


[Edited on November 10, 2005 at 12:21 PM. Reason : .]

11/10/2005 12:20:33 PM

Quote :

"from the guest column: * Check out R78, Student Conduct Caution Act and R79, The Facebook Act to find out what Student Senate is doing in regards to this important issue..."

Quote :

" RESOLVED, that, while not encouraging improper behavior, the North Carolina State Student Senate encourages students to consider removing any picture, video, or dialogue that could be construed as incriminating from any public domain such as thefacebook.com or the Wolf Web; and, be it further RESOLVED, that the Student Senate recommends that students exercise caution when communicating through any means within the NCSU computer infrastructure;"

Ohhh Student Senate... you sure did help us there. Stop wasting our time.

[Edited on November 10, 2005 at 12:23 PM. Reason : extra quote]

11/10/2005 12:22:38 PM

Wow, are you so contrarian that you would oppose something that is incredibly good for you?

You can't get more lame than that.

11/10/2005 12:23:02 PM

HEY CAN THE STUDENT SENATE PASS A MOTION TELLING ME WHAT COLOR THE SKY IS
ALSO THIS UP AND DOWN THING NEEDS TO BE CLARIFIED

11/10/2005 12:25:00 PM

No I oppose dumb asses. Simple as that. I agree. Cousins is pathetic, the RA is pathetic... but this justification in the form of a column trumps the pathetic meter.

You can argue it from a totally different POV and it would make much more sense. Simply put, there is no right to privacy in a public forum and to argue it from that stance is ridiculous and ignorant.

[Edited on November 10, 2005 at 12:26 PM. Reason : .]

11/10/2005 12:25:00 PM

I even take issue with the title of the column

Quote :

"Privacy: our fundamental freedom"

That actually would be the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I don't blame that on Walton though... the Technician always chose my titles for me (and often horrible ones).

11/10/2005 12:31:21 PM

i certainly agree with you here, abnorino. People talking about constitutional rights and whatnot when talking about htis case are obviously totally ignorant. those rights are to privacy from the government, not from anyone else. Also, as you stated, these photos were posted in public. It's like having your photos tacke to a bulletin board in the brickyard and saying OMFG DON'T LOOK AT THOSE, I HAVE A RIGHT TO PRIVACY.

There are PLENTY of valid arguments against the use of these photos; they are going about this entirely incorrectly.

11/10/2005 12:48:58 PM

Quote :

" [fundamental freedom] actually would be the right to life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness. I don't blame that on Walton though... the Technician always chose my titles for me (and often horrible ones)."

Because
1. The declaration of independence is the law of the land
2. The declaration was a complete and exclusive legal list of fundamental freedoms and not persuasive propaganda
3. Because the right to privacy is not entailed in "liberty"

11/10/2005 12:53:44 PM

the key word here is fundamental. i never said exclusive.

dirtygreek... you're right. there's.more than one way to skin a cat. they've chosen the worst way imaginable. but these senators and guest column authors are so arrogant that they actually believe they're fighting a constitutional cause here when it's actually a non-issue.

[Edited on November 10, 2005 at 1:51 PM. Reason : .]

11/10/2005 1:50:36 PM

I give him credit for trying at least.

But I've got a trio of kegs in my dorm room that says this was/is his prelude to running for some higher office in Student Government.


[Edited on November 10, 2005 at 2:06 PM. Reason : It's like John Edwards writing a book, shrunk down to campus size...]

11/10/2005 2:05:21 PM

I blame people for posting incriminating evidence on public forums, but I also blame the RA for carrying out a witchhunt for a pretty much victimless crime. By the time you are in college, the 21 age requirement is pretty much arbitrary.

11/10/2005 2:14:33 PM

operative word being CRIME

im just saying, the RA was a dick, but if she wants to be that way it is within her right/power to do so.

[Edited on November 10, 2005 at 2:20 PM. Reason : .]

11/10/2005 2:20:10 PM

this is walton's thing to get somewhere higher. all these school 'senators' have the delusion that what they say or do actually effects something. their resolutions say nothing but the obvious, weild no power nor influence, and serves as another bullet point on special grade paper to submit to law schools... of which that bullet point works well on my resume. that's the good student senate brings.

[Edited on November 10, 2005 at 2:54 PM. Reason : .]

11/10/2005 2:49:19 PM

Quote :

"heir resolutions say nothing but the obvious, weild no power nor influence, and serves as another bullet point on special grade paper to submit to law schools..."

as the former elections director at ECU, I can say this is a pretty accurate statement

11/10/2005 2:51:21 PM

Brian, good points, all of 'em. I'm glad you're remaining a part of the tww community

11/11/2005 8:53:49 AM

Gives me something to do at work... and being a critic is always fun. I finally get to play the other side of the columnist/public relationship.

11/11/2005 9:39:17 AM

No shit... if you want your privacy, keep your pictures private.

11/11/2005 2:02:29 PM

Quote :

"Because 1. The declaration of independence is the law of the land 2. The declaration was a complete and exclusive legal list of fundamental freedoms and not persuasive propaganda 3. Because the right to privacy is not entailed in "liberty""

Hate to break it to you Skoki, but the Declaration of Independence is not the law of the land. The Constitution is. They are two entirely separate documents. Looks like someone needs a American history refresher course.

11/11/2005 3:14:00 PM

^
not to speak for the unmatched brilliance of such a great mind like skokiaan, but that post was actually sarcasm...

11/11/2005 4:01:46 PM

^ Not relevant, you should have known better than to utilize sarcasm without the <sarcasm> insert, how else is anyone going to know? You might be batshit insane for all we know!

11/11/2005 4:42:32 PM

Regardless... shitty column... shitty point... don't be dumbasses. Keep your pictures private.

11/11/2005 5:29:29 PM

Quote :

"but I also blame the RA for carrying out a witchhunt for a pretty much victimless crime"

alright, this is just plain stupid. Do you REALLY expect me to believe that an RA had nothing better to do with her time than browse facebook looking for people drinking? How long would that fucking take? 30-40 minutes? Wouldn't it just be easier to walk down the fucking hallway and knock on the god-damned door?

11/12/2005 12:42:34 AM

Odds are it was not a concious search through facebook for anything incriminating. Odds are that it was an accidental discovery. For all we know, the perpetrator had his face-book pictures linked from his web-page which he then gave to his RA because "Hey! You wanna see something cool? Go check out the links on my web-page!"

Or maybe the RA is a friend of a friend of a friend of the perpetrator and all of them have links to each other's web pages on their web pages, and the interest to find out "Hey, lets see who's friends with so-and-so!" is sometimes overwealming.

Or maybe, while drinking in the dorm he pissed off his roomate which then forwarded links to said pictures to the RA.

Just speculating. But all things being equal, an accidental discovery is much more likely than the alternatives.

11/12/2005 10:17:09 AM

^
Or this was typical high school shit, with an overzealous RA getting pissed off for some reason and going on a hunt for violations.

With all of the denials coming from one group or another about various aspects of this, the RA intentionally sifting through hundreds upon hundreds of photos is the only thing that people agree on.

And aaronburro don't tell me you honestly don't believe people still do this in college


[Edited on November 12, 2005 at 10:58 AM. Reason : ---]

11/12/2005 10:55:20 AM

I don't think it was a witch hunt. I was an RA, I had my residents on my AIM list and many of them were my friends. It's not out of the realm of possibility that the RA had some of his/her residents on facebook. Now I actually blame the RA though for being an overzealous fuck. I caught my resident's drinking and was like "don't let me catch you do this. You've been warned." That would've been the appropriate thing to do... walk down to the resident's room, knock, and say, "hey, remove this picture asap."

Some people really get worked up about being an RA. They make 133.00 a month (plus the "luxury" of having a free room). I think she should do her real job and ADVISE THE RESIDENTS... go figure... such a novel concept...

11/12/2005 12:48:38 PM

^
I think the vast majority of RAs would do the same, but if even a tenth of what has been reported (either in person, on TWW, or in the Technician) is remotely true, this particular RA was in a mood to write someone up. Maybe she was PMSing, who knows ::shrug::

11/12/2005 1:57:29 PM

When I was an RA, a couple of my underage residents offered me a beer multiple times when I was hanging out with them in their suite. I basically just declined, and suggested maybe they keep the fridge shut while I'm in the room.

11/13/2005 4:15:59 AM

^ Did you suggest dumping grounds when a murder was committed in front of you too?

11/13/2005 8:19:01 AM

^oh boy, you're as bad as walton (the original point of this thread). He compared NCSU rules to N. Korea and the use of public pictures in a public domain as the beginning of an orwellian chapter.

And you compare "shutting the fridge" to dumping a body.

Wow.

^^ I did the same. Except on the last week of school (when I didn't care about losing my job), I took shots with some of my residents. I only wrote up one kid in an entire year. Smoking on the balcony. I caught him at least 7 times and he failed to listen. I had to write him up in that instance.

11/13/2005 10:46:25 AM

^ Sometimes, exageration can be enlightenning, we are just checking to see if it can be applied in this instance.

11/13/2005 11:43:11 AM

^^^^^Either that, or she was pissed off because she thought she had her residents under control, and she saw that these people were drinking on her time and under her nose. Her insecurities she felt about being a good RA were heightened even more, so she figured she turn them in to make it look like she's doing a good job after all. Just wild speculation.

11/13/2005 4:51:17 PM

^
Well sure, except that a number of the pictures weren't even taken on US soil...

11/13/2005 4:57:52 PM