They're Not Like Us: Shouldn't We Do Something About That?

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They're Not Like Us: Shouldn't We Do Something About That?

5/27/2004

By Terry Calhoun

A year ago this week, professor David Starrett of Southeast Missouri State University, and director of that institution's Center for Scholarship in Teaching and Learning wrote here as a guest commentator, HIG, R U n2 CP?: The Technology is the Easy Part, about the level of acceptance students have for information technology tools and resources and the difficulty we have in understanding even what their expectations of us are, much less meeting those expectations. In the past year, I've also written in The Feral User about the raw, relatively unrestrained online behavior of many young people, who've grown up in cyberspace without any acculturation influence from teachers or parents.

Since then, I've seen article after article and news item after news item that makes me think about just how different from us these new undergraduate students are. Is it really possible to understand their expectations? I think we can do it with surveys and by measuring responses to things, but I am more and more convinced that as a Baby Boomer, I am beyond ever really understanding them. They're really different, they inhabit a different universe. But one news story last week was different - a young student did the right thing. Was this a sign of positive change, or anomalous behavior by a unique individual?

Students at the University of Michigan access their official records through a program called Wolverine Access. I've never used it myself, but I've seen my work-study students use it frequently. In February, Wolverine Access, which is at its core PeopleSoft-based although the add-ons involved in the current story were a home-grown module, got a new interface. On May 16, Jon Oberheide, a U-M junior had accessed his own records and, while inside Wolverine Access, did some poking around, clicking on various things. He was using a Macintosh platform and the Safari browser. Eventually, Jon realized that he had found his way into Web space where he could access the personal information not just of himself but of others.

So, what did Jon do then? Well, many students would have done nothing. Many more would have poked around and told a few friends about it, and how to do it. Some would have thought it was pretty cool and spread the word more widely across the Internet. Jon quickly contacted the appropriate U-M officials and notified them of the security breach. He did exactly the right thing!

It should be noted that the university did the right thing, too. It researched the problem, found the mistake in the add-on code, and fixed it. (It was a very contained circumstance - a user would have had to be legitimately logged on to Wolverine Access and using Mac OS and Safari to take advantage of it.) Then, even though Michigan d'es not have the same kind of law as d'es California, which requires elaborate disclosure of the possible exposure of personal information to all possibly affected users, the university engaged in a comprehensive notification of everyone whose information could have been at risk. It noted that the programming error was its own, had been fixed, and even set up a hot line for concerned persons to call and have their questions answered about their personal information.