20050511

Fall of CSECDept website

Today just before the exam (Electronic Circuits) Ananthu and Murali came in and said that Ms.Kalaivani (DBMS, 3rd sem) wanted to see us for publishing about her in our class website. We(Sudarsan and me) went and saw her. She asked us about the website and who had published such information in it. Sudarsan was prepared for it by telling that someone named X had registered and had posted about this. He said that we didnt know who it was. She said that the president had come to know about it and he had asked the Special Officer(SO) (Dr.B.MuthuKumaran) to enquire about it. After finishing the exam we went to see our HOD, but saw only Ms.Kalaivani who asked us to come with her and meet SO. We went with her and Ananthu was also there for geting a bonafide. She made us to stand there. Then Avanthi also came and said that she was called by SO. After a while we went in and Dr.Muthukumaran began to scold us by asking who developed the site and who gave the permission to develop the site. He kept scolding us that we had no right to comment about a staff and we were no match for her.

The entire story happened back in the 3rd semester. We had a new staff (Ms.Kalaivani) to teach DBMS for us and one day she asked us what is the difference between a compiler and an interpreter. We answered it and she said that it was wrong. She said that a compiler executes the program line by line and a interpreter reads the entire program in a single go and executes. We said that it was wrong. She said no - What she said was only right.
So I blogged about that in our blog. Here is the post from the blog.
Monday, July 12, 2004

Today the most funny thing happened. DBMS ma'am today asked us what is
teh difference between a compiler and an interpreter. We said that a
compiler reads the entire code and an interpreter executes the code
line by line. Then she said that a compiler only reads the code line
by line and an interpreter executes as a whole. I don't know where she
got her degree. Hope the principal reads this blog or atleast HOD
ma'am reads this. I want to show the college the knowledge of our
teaching staffs. How can we expect to get within 10 ranks if such
staffs are present.
- posted by csec @ 5:37 AM

Now back to the present, SO showed us some printouts which were from the blog and also the discussion forum. There was a principal joke in it where the mother persuades the principal to goto school...
For that Robi had replied something about the principal and also said 'The same can be applicable to the Special Officer'. So the SO began to scold us for developing a website in the name of the college. He began to tell 'what would others think about our college after seeing the website?'. He also began to scold us for misusing the college name. He even threatened to file a police complaint. :-))
The charges against us were -
Me(Srinivasan) - For developing the website
Sudarsan - For developing the website
Anantharaman - For developing the website
Avanthi - For chatting with boys in the discussion forum
Robi - For commenting about the principal(who has left college now) and mainly about the SO

Ms.Kalaivani began to tell that she asked only basic questions without which she couldn't continue with the class. When she asked about compilers and interpreters, she only said "Are you sure?" and nothing else.
I was totally enraged by this big lie. How dare she tell such a lie. She also said that during the class hours, the students used to message each other and also pass messages in the form of bits.

So Dr.B.Muthukumaran suspended all five of us. The secretary typed the letter and asked us to sign in it. The letter read that
'The following students are suspended from the college for their misbehaviour by misusing the website of our college'
I wanted to ask her about the words 'website of our college' but she didn't allow me to talk and got our sign. Then our HOD was called and she was shown all the printouts. The SO then said that all the things must be deleted and we must come meet him the next day. We went to the department and waited for HOD to return.

When the HOD returned we asked her how they came to know about it. She said, the president came to know about this and he sent the links to SO and asked to take printouts of the website. She said not to worry as she had recommended for us and to come tomorrow after deleting all the stuff and the suspension would be revoked.

So what was my/our mistake?? We created a website for our class. How could we identify ourselves without using the college name. We didn't say that it was the official website of Saveetha Engineering College. The website read "Computer Science Department, Saveetha Engineering College". I dont think there is anything wrong in it. When we can have websites that can review about products like www.mouthshut.com or when we can discuss about any topic on Usenet, what is wrong in having a community website for our class? Were any copyright laws infringed? All the content on the website were the views of the members. If the views were against the college, then it is the mistake of the college by not maintaining a standard in teaching. If I say Microsoft products sucks, then it is my personal view and Microsoft cannot sue me. They have to make sure that their products are maintaining the standard.

The sad part is that they dont realise the state of the college with such staffs. I don't know where the college will head to with such people teaching us and governing us.

2 comments:

Sudarsan Srinivasan said...

Good old days!

Srinivasan R said...

Wow. I don't even remember I blogged about this.

Sadly, nothing has changed, even at the national level. Censorship sucks.