HACkers blog

A recent article on IOL reported on "sex consent forms" being circulated in the wake of the recent / current rape trials of Benedict Vilakazi and Jacob Zuma. The premise seems to be, men can't trust women not to cry rape afterwards, so best get her to put it in writing.

Of course it's pretty flawed - aside from the point mentioned in the article about forms signed under duress - even if the form states that it's not being signed under duress - it implies that consenting to sex once with someone equates with permanent consent. The form cited in the article contains the following clause:

"I commit myself not to ever stand on the witness box in court to testify against him or lay a charge of rape against him."

Split infinitive [flinch!] aside, not _ever_? Not even if, three years later, three days later, three minutes later, he rapes her? What woman in her right mind would sign such a form, except under duress? And what legal standing could such a form possibly have, anyway?

Still, it raises interesting questions about the nature, timeliness and duration of consent. If one consents, can one withdraw that consent - and, if so, up to what point? Is submission the same as consent? Under what circumstances is consent not consent?

A little earlier today, during what some people have the luxury of regarding as "lunch time", my PC monitor flashed brightly, made the sound of a rubber band snapping, and then lapsed into the Black Screen of Death with an ominous silence. The comforting hum of the fan was no more. The R2D2 flashing lights on the back of the network card had joined The Dark Side, and no amount of switch pressing could bring light, or life, to the PC.

The power light on the monitor, though, continued to do its Saturday Night Fever imitation, and the lights on the multiplug blazed like a christmas tree. Not the power, then. Phew!

My kneejerk response was to unplug the dead PC and to log a call with the Helpdesk... until I remembered that HEAT ran on my PC. And that I really didn't feel like carrying a PC all the way over to ICTS across a Plaza crammed with lunching students, against high winds. And that my access to Netscape Calendar relied on my PC. (And to SAP, though I'd have been glad of the excuse not to have that!) Did I really have the time to sit on another PC and write down all my forthcoming appointments, and type them into my hellphone... and then hope nothing changed in the interim? And then, back in my office, copy them all onto iCal? My resolve buckled.

I borrowed a key and bravely ventured into the PC Limbo that houses PCs on their way to Paradise or Perdition, and sought something of similar vintage to my own, brandished my screwdriver menacingly until it cowered obediently, and whipped out its power supply. After recovering from the inevitable attack of the rabid dustbunnies, I retreated to my office with the captive power supply pinioned firmly under my arm.

The transplant was uneventful, and the patient made a full recovery. Total downtime - 15 minutes, including the ten minutes to locate the key. Excluding the aeons it routinely takes to boot up, run login scripts, attempt to install various other things and finally deliver me to my desktop. I felt quite pleased, and smugly productive.

Especially when I considered the likely alternative. I could have logged a call. If I was lucky, I'd have gotten through on the telephone, and the person on the other end would have captured what I told them in the call details as I reported it, and not via a process of interpretation. They'd have asked for someone to be sent to collect the dead PC.

At some stage, someone would have come. This could be anything from minutes to days later, depending on availability, schedules, and planetary alignment. It would not have been preceded by a telephone call to announce their arrival, or to check that anyone was here, and so - in all likelihood - it would have found no one at home, and necessitated a revisit - similarly unannounced - with eventual success. Whereafter the PC would have lain in the workshop, been diagnosed, and an appropriately aged power supply sought. Given the vintage of the PC (which runs Windows 98SE) this would not have been an easy task, and may have taken a while. Eventually, one would have been traced, installed, and tested. The PC would have been declared healthy and sent home.

Whereupon the delivery would have repeated the collection cycle, of repeat, frustrated, visits, before successful completion.

Estimated downtime? Hmmm. How long is the proverbial piece of string? But it could have been anything from hours to weeks. And, by comparison, 15 minutes seemed a far better bet.

Of course, I'm not recommending anyone do this. My PC is safely out of warranty, and so there is no risk of ICTS turning around and denying me support on the basis of my actions. They'd have denied it anyway on the basis of the age of my PC. Nor should anyone attempt to diagnose and cure their PC ailments without at least some prospect of success - it's pretty straightforward stuff, but there are some things one does need to know to prevent irreversible damage.

I'm merely using this happy little anecdote to illustrate why the temptation to work outside of The System sometimes gets the better of us, however sane or necessary The System might be. Sometimes, we just don't have the time.

We all agree that plagiarism is evil. But we don't agree, it seems, as to what exactly plagiarism *is*. Beyond evil, that is. Some people are content to see it simply as the verbatim copying of text from elsewhere, without acknowledgement. But even here it isn't always that simple.

A couple of years ago, one of my classmates at Our Sister Institution in a Masters Programme lifted, word for word, a substantial portion (including the section on ethics...) of a classmate's research proposal, and pasted it into his own. On the face of it a clear cut case - but the plagiarised student was left feeling like a criminal for having brough the matter to the course convenor's attention, and the recycler - who admitted to the misdeed - suffered no major consequence. In fact, a substantial promotion (here at UCT) followed. We might not tolerate plagiarism among our students, but the extramural hobbies of our staff are their own business.

Because we don't wish to contaminate ourselves by putting our hands on the stuff, a proposal was brought to the Senate to outsource that task to a machine. Well, to a piece of software and a database, whatever. After a succession of speakers from Humanities named David (either as first or second name) pointed out some of the limitations of this proposed solution to even the narrowest understanding of plagiarism, Senate almost unanimously blew its collective nose on the proposal. (There was a single vote in favour - the proposer. Not even the seconder supported it. Some kind of record, surely?) But Senate did support the debate being taken to Faculty Boreds with Real, Serious Proposals being brought back to Senate later in the year.

Sadly, someone (not named David) with a rather broader understanding of what constitutes plagiarism, was not at that meeting of Senate to share his views with the rest of us.

A recent legal ruling in the UK saw a woman found guilty of defamation for comments posted on a chat site (see article below from Guardian Unlimited) and ordered to pay a substantial sum in damages to her "victim".

It appears that the "victim" went after the chat site host (Yahoo) too, but given their base in the US, this was not pursued.

Is this the end of freedom of expression on the Internet?

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"The blogs are fun," a colleague ventured, with the slightest trace of condescension in his voice, "but I'm not sure that they're really much use for teaching!"

I thought long and hard before I replied. There were multiple possibilities. I could:

* rave on evangelistically until his eyes glazed over and he edged nervously back into his office, determined never again to utter something potentially provocative;

* refer him to the CET Teaching with Technology seminar and workshop series, where he'd be introduced by enthusiastic others to the delights and uses of blogging - but the seminar had passed (for now) and signing up for a workshop was already some way down a pathway of commitment I'm not sure he was ready, at this stage, to explore;

* refer him to some of the *other* blogs on our very own blogspot, that were demonstrating blogging for teaching, or blogging for learning, or both. Which I did.

On the blogspot, and in class, interesting things are happening. Students are nurturing blogs, developing voices and personae and finding their audiences, using a range of tools and techniques - including some sophisticated cognitive ones as they get into reflexive mode comparing notes with each other. Exciting conversations develop, and more than one colleague who's been subjected to my febrile mutterings about the developing dynamics has urged it toward publication.

And, lest anyone think that blogging is of use in teaching only where blogging forms the content as well as the medium of instruction - think again! Even the ECOmaniacs have seen its educational potential, and have unleashed a horde of student bloggers on the blogspot. It's a matter of time before the lawyers, the medics, and - god help us all - the engineers follow suit.

Students asking obscure questions in class is nothing new. But over at the "university" in the vineyard, things got a little out of hand, according to a report on News24. It seems that students achieved their objective of being disruptive, and the lecturer got to grips with the situation. Physically.

Charges, countercharges and column inches later, the situation appears no closer to resolution. Escalation appears inevitable.

I find it hard to fathom where my sympathies lie. The students concerned were seeking to draw attention to a residence event - the residence being Huis Bekfluitjie, whose proud traditions include the forced cold showering of female students who venture too close to the residence and associated theft of watches and jewellery, the physical assault of male students from other residences who utter the word "bekfluitjie", and -most recently and infamously - the shooting of passing female students with a pellet gun.

A proud tradition, stretching back many generations. One of our own Deans came close to being physically assaulted on the occasion of the one-and-only-ever protest march held at the "university" before the then-Rector proclaimed that the holding of dissenting political views was inconsistent with the nature and function of being a university, and banned any further action.

Upholding this tradition of thuggery, then, does not elicit a sympathetic response from me. But then, neither did the actions of the lecturer. Currently director of the centre for applied ethics, the lecturer concerned was among my philosophy teachers during my undergraduate years. His alignment was clear - a compulsory module on The Philosophy of Religion was in fact an extended discussion of different threads of Calvinism more appropriately located in the Theological Seminary down the road. His tolerance of dissent, too, was questionable.

As, allegedly, was his tolerance for interruption recently. According to the report, he grabbed one of the students and pushed him around after ordering him to leave the class - releasing him only when members of the class shouted "assault". I find it difficult to distinguish this kind of behaviour from the thuggery of the students. Particularly when one considers the rank and seniority of the lecturer, his training and his disciplinary allegiance. Would he consider the physical manhandling - technically assault - of a student by a lecturer to be "ethical behaviour", I wonder.

I find it difficult to read this incident outside of its context. This "university" has a long tradition of physically assaulting, and psychologically abusing, new students during initiation - practices which, while recently outlawed, are rumoured still to continue underground (albeit in less severe forms). A recent visit to the village convinced me that racism is still very much part of the local climate, that tolerance for anything "other" is limited and old models of authority an abhorrence of critical engagement still persist. That "boys" still resort to their fists to settle disputes thus comes as no surprise to me.

"Stellenbosch staan vir 'n idee" (Stellenbosch stands for an idea), we were told often, and proudly. An idea still, it would seem, best expressed with fists.

The full text of the News24 article, given that clicking the link reports network errors, is pasted below:

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Friday afternoon in the FAM passage. I'm posting a notice on the FAM2000F noticeboard for the intrepid bloggers, and the queue outside Petros's office is slowly dwindling as weekend calls. The passage is unusually quiet.

Slowly doors creak open and heads emerge, like whelks coming up for air as the tide rolls out. The tea-room sighs and breaths them in for a last cup of coffee, a few exchanged words, before a long exhalation to weekend.

I mention how pleased I am that the group has finally been able to start blogging - and that some were blogging away as we were speaking, posting to their blogs, and commenting on others.

Conversation ceases. Coffee cups freeze halfway up to parched lips. Shock and incomprehension frown across faces. "What?" squeezes out through numbed lips. "Don't they know it's Friday afternoon?"

Slowly life oozes back and movement resumes. Coffee hastily swallowed, cups rinsed and left to drain, appliances switched off. And then, a quiet, lone voice ventures, "What's blogging?"

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Despite recent power outages, teaching continued - bringing light and learning to the students of Cape Town:

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