New U. Missouri Students Required to Participate in University Tracking Program
“Officials say it’s for the students’ own good.”
Give them an inch and they will go a mile. How much you want to bet that will happen? It’s for their own good, y’all!
From The Kansas City Star:
University of Missouri students, be warned: If it’s not Big Brother watching you, it might be your professors and university administrators.
The school is using hidden technology and an app on student cellphones to keep track of who is in class and who is not.
Officials say it’s for the students’ own good. Besides, they say, MU’s athletic department has been using the tracking app the past four years for all freshmen athletes, plus any athlete in academic trouble.
Now, as a test pilot, the school is expanding the program to any student new to campus for this semester, which starts Tuesday. Faculty volunteered to have their classes be part of the test. Their students won’t be given a choice.
“A student will have to participate in the recording of attendance,” said Jim Spain, vice provost for undergraduate studies at MU. Every student involved will be told ahead of time that attendance is being monitored. University officials, Spain said, will even work with students who don’t have a phone to make sure they can participate.
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Comments
I guess a cell phone charge will be part of the cost of tuition in future so students without cell phones can be given one.
And they wonder why enrollment is down? How can people that dumb educate anyone?
The reason enrollment is down currently is the race and social justice conflagration of a few years ago that we all saw there. The likely reason for this new rule is the quality of students that remained, after any students with self respect went elsewhere.
Glad this wasn’t a thing when I was in college.
I’d outright refuse and find another college, or go to trade school so I could take care of the cars, houses, or businesses of the credentialed.
Or, just leave my cell phone at home.
But hey, no more lost cell phones. /s And the title “icks” office will know about all the hook-ups in real-time. What could go wrong?
“Officials say it’s for the students’ own good. Besides, they say, MU’s athletic department has been using the tracking app the past four years for all freshmen athletes, plus any athlete in academic trouble.”
“There is no worse tyranny than to force someone to do what he does not want merely because you think it would be good for him.” – (Multiple attributions for slight variations.)
Just because the athletic department has been doing this for the past four years doesn’t mean it isn’t an invasion of privacy.
How long will it be before the tracking records are subpoenaed for use in a court action (civil or criminal)? Fourth/Fifth Amendment implications?
“A desire not to butt into other people’s business is at least eighty percent of all human wisdom.” – Robert A. Heinlein
What happens if the student refuses to install the app on their phone?
If the student refuses, they likely would be stricken from the rolls and told to leave. Smart students who can afford it will just buy a burner, put minimum air time on it, install the tracking software, then just not carry it.
I didn’t carry a phone in college. They didn’t make the cords long enough.
As for the athletic department tracking their charges, why were they the testing ground?
That would prove you did not attend class even if you did. Good way to get in academic trouble.
No, you take that burner and give it to one person in each class who’s volunteered to carry them for other students. That way everyone shows up for every class … in his backpack.
🙂
Or, as a Delta House-esque prank, trade phones with folks in other majors. Physics majors showing up in lesbian interpretive dance. Law majors showing up for chemistry. Pre-med showing up in Con-Law. Basketball majors actually going to a class.
just think of all the fun you can have if the app gets hacked