2/14/1997 9:56 PM

To all CS Majors on CSLAB,

On Friday the 7th, I mailed out a malicious email to CS Majors. Not only was the message malicious, it was also fraudulent. I repeat the message in question was not sent out by Markus Groener, but by me. For producing and sending out the message I can only ask for forgiveness from Mr. Groener. It was wrong for me to produce and send out the message. In the process of doing so, I not only violated the Honor Code for fraud; but I also violated the CNS and CS appropriate use policy.

Another issue I would like to address is mostly for new students and freshman. As most of us are new to this college environment we find that we sometimes have no real avenues to display our content or discontent on certain things. This is how I felt, when I did the mass mailing. At the time I produced the mass mail, I was under the impression that Mr. Groener was grading unfairly. Now I understand that not all sections had the grading policy set forth for the class enforced as strictly as Mr. Groener had. In fact this was probably the cause of most of frustration, because I believed that the CS Dept had a double standard of grading. After have a discussion with Mr. Groener and Professor Edwards, I now realize there are many things I could have done differently. The very first thing I could have done was to talk to the instructor. Sometimes instructors seem unapproachable but if you try to approach them, they usually will respond positively. Another thing, since Mr. Groener is a GTA, I could have contacted his supervisor with my grievances. Another avenue was to contact Dr. Verna Schuetz. I am told she is always available to talk to about a certain instructor. Dr. Schuetz is also is charge of all TA job assignments, so she oversees them for their entire TA career in the CS Dept. Of course one of the slowest avenue is the end of semester evaluation. At the time of my mass mail, I did not know that those evaluation comments are shown to the instructor. I believed that only the multiple choice comments were shown. This is not the case, in fact ever thing is shown to the instructor. The only problem with this avenue is that the instructor will not see these evaluations until the middle of the next semester. So therefore there is a very slow turn back time on the evaluation. So in defense of what I have done, I really have none. At the time it was the only way I saw that I could release my frustration on Mr. Groener's grading policy. Now that I am going through this ordeal I find that what I did was very stupid and immature. Besides that fact there are many other ways of doing things, that are legitimate. I would like to take this opportunity to ask for Mr. Groener's forgiveness and also the forgiveness of you all. The email was not only harmful to Mr. Groener but also to all users of the CSLab. Also this gives me the opportunity to warn all of you out there that might be using the mass mail list. DON'T DO IT, IT ISN'T WORTH IT. Mass mailing is not the answer for anything. That is unless you have permission. Mass mailings not only fills up unnecessary disk space, but also take a lot of processor time.

Hoping for your forgiveness,
Shashi Bhushan

1. This clown posted an e-mail to the listserv which said "If anyone has a problem with the way I grade, please discuss it on the listserv :) Markus Groener" and believed not only that people would think it was real, but also expected that no one would catch him. He was obviously a high-quality CS major destined for great things. I wonder where he is today.
2. It's true that the CS department's grading scale was not consistent, but the class he was having troubles in was Introduction to Operating Systems where you learn what to type to show a list of files or delete something. If a few points is going to make a life-or-death difference in your grades, you may be in the wrong major.
3. I like how most of the e-mail was obviously dictated by an angry professor while the clueless student typed at gunpoint. I even cut out an entire paragraph that restated the guidelines for acceptable use verbatim from the student handbook.

4. One of the people listed in the e-mail as someone you could always go to for a kind handshake and an open door was the biggest swamp monster in the history of swamp monsters. That particular professor used the position as the supreme seat of ultimate power in the fiefdom, and would decline to help you merely to show off the power. This professor tried to hold me back for a 6th year of schooling, implying that I was stupid for not being able to finish the curriculum in 4, ignoring my other major and the fact that they changed the requirements in my 5th year. Some day I will get my revenge and cast the foul beast back into the swamp from whence it came.

5. There were maybe four professors total in that entire department that were decent, caring people. The rest were so caught up in their research and egos that you would have thought our department was accredited or something.
6. The TAs in that department were pretty useless. At least when I was a music TA, I actually showed up for my office hours and tried to help people. In CS, if your TA couldn't fix your problem, he would give you an answer just to get you gone, and then mark it wrong when he graded the paper.
7. In other TA news, the TAs at NYU are threatening to strike, which is a ridiculously stupid thing to do . Regardless of how well or poorly they're treated in their jobs, TAs seem to forget the fundamental reason for their employment: getting a graduate degree. Even if you are the worst-paid TA in the universe, have nine classes to teach, and part of your job description is to clean the seats of the New York subway with your tongue like a cat, you are doing the job because it's aiding you in getting to your post-college degree (which will no doubt increase your yearly salary by 4500%). If you aren't willing to be overworked for a few years to get that degree, then you need to make the decision about whether the degree is a big enough prize for the aches you go through and drop out if it isn't. Don't strike like a moron. The world does not owe you a thing.

Today was List Day if you couldn't tell. If you missed the crazy Christian lady on Trading Spouses last night, you can watch the original clip here: (1 MB WMV). I'm glad I didn't grow up in that household, because I would have turned out even crazier than I already am.

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