[hackerspaces] Student hackers in a university environment

Matt Joyce matt at nycresistor.com
Fri May 28 16:40:25 CEST 2010


When I was in college, I became pretty good friends with the network lead, I
found that a bunch of his managed switches had a not so documented default
login.  But, the it dept in general hated me.  They removed internet access
from my dorm room at one point.  They didn't like that my system wasn't
behaving normally.  I filed a complaint with a couple deans and they
straight up lost it.  They went so far as to lock me out of course
registrations.

A few bad eggs can make your life very difficult.  I ended up doing some
work for a large grant at the college and as a result was building some
pretty neat apps that IT had to take ownership of after I left.  We spent
considerable amounts of time causing each other grief.

Moral of the story is...  not everyone is awesome.  Be cautious in dealing
with college IT folks.

Also, grants are a hell of a lot more fun to work for than IT.

On May 28, 2010 10:19 AM, "Far McKon" <farmckon at gmail.com> wrote:

Hey folks,
I'm putting together a talk about student hackers in a college
environment.  A large part of this is an argument for giving students
more freedom on the network, making a space/setting/environment where
they can hack around *without* making a pain for the rest of the IT
infrastructure. So I'm looking to find good background on successful
student - IT Department collaborations.  IE Student Interns, Penn
tests by students, etc. Even students working the help desk and IT
building are a bit of interest. Cases of 'I found bug X and uni. IT
hired me' or 'We had a nice sysdmin that let us play on the network'
are also of interest.

If you want to share, I'm all ears. I'd love to hear about it (off
list) so I can make sure I'm getting solid evidence to back my ideas.

thanks in advance, and hack on,
- Far McKon

http://www.Hive76.org  "Making things awesome,  making awesome things!"
http://www.FarMcKon.net "Creatively Maladjusted"
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