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Re: robust software



This point has been a big surprise for me.
I live in Mexico, working in an autonomous
university where academic freedom is very important,
but reaching an extreme position, so that every one
can do everything as he wants.

In his office room each teacher use windows or linux.
Fortran or C, eudora or outlook, etc...

No legal action can be done against you if you work
with your own academic material. A lot of teachers
take their computers (laptop) to the house, where they continue
with their work, to come back with some advance after
a weekend. Our institution get free colaboration because
teachers are working out of the campus.

As a consequence of this freedom, two years ago,
our main administratives decided to buy a filter for
internet to avoid students and teachers watching "porno"
through the computers in the campus.
Something similar to a father in his home.


Except for that, I feel that this is a better situation in some sense, but a
bad in another: a lot of freedom give us some chaotic
aspects of our academic work.

Arnulfo Castellanos-Moreno


----- Original Message -----
From: "RAUBER, JOEL" <JOEL_RAUBER@SDSTATE.EDU>
To: <PHYS-L@lists.nau.edu>
Sent: Wednesday, March 12, 2003 7:48 AM
Subject: Re: robust software


Joe depressed us with a story which read in part:

I am currently gathering documentation and exploring the
possibility of
legal action on the grounds of infringement of academic freedom. The
choice of what tools are appropriate for instructional purposes lies
squarely with faculty and not with associate degree technology
students. The REALLY sad part is that our IT staff consists
of our very
own current and past IT students. I'm trying VERY HARD to get
away from
this institution.


I doubt that you will have much legal grounds based on academic freedom as
that typically isn't a legally codified concept in most education
contracts.
However, if AAUP (American Association of University Professors) is very
interested academic freedom issues and your stories are as egregious as
many
which they have tried to handle. Assuming litigation isn't an option they
can censure schools, which actually can sometimes have beneficial affects.

Joel Rauber