Let’s set up a Web site.
It will be an online forum where UCSD students can do things like post comments about their professors and rate classes. We’ll advertise it with posters in Price Center, but to make it easier to remember, we’ll include the abbreviation “”UCSD”” in the address. It will be relatively uncensored, founded on the principles of free speech.
Although similar to the UCSDuncensored Web site that was recently shut down by Nicholas S. Aguilar, the director of Student Policies and Judicial Affairs, the aforementioned Web site is still operational. Despite having a similar purpose and a similar name ‹ and seemingly violating the same section of the California Education Code, which bans the use of “”UCSD”” in an organization’s name ‹ the Web site, UCSDprofessor.com remains online.
There is no logical reason for Aguilar to prosecute UCSDuncensored, especially when a site like UCSDprofessor is considered.
UCSDuncensored was a place where students could network with each other, trade tips, talk about campus life, advertise a party or post photos from their vacations. It was an innocuous little site designed by two UCSD students. The community was well run and relatively popular ‹ hardly an abuse of the UCSD moniker.
And yet, Aguilar has targeted it for termination. He says it was because it violated university policy, but so do a number of other Web sites that manage to stay online.
Aguilar’s most likely ulterior motive is to eliminate competition. The Web site’s creators have postulated that the university has planned a similar Web site, akin to UCLA’s all-in-one “”MyUCLA”” Web site, where students can register for classes, post in a community forum, chat, vote in student elections, check e-mail and more. The university-owned Web site would become a portal through which all UCSD-related traffic would be directed. In a nutshell, it would be StudentLink with a few bells and whistles.
The only problem is UCSDuncensored beat the university to the punch.
UCSDuncensored competes with the community forum/chatroom part of that plan. Having been approached by A.S. Commissioner of Enterprise Operations Jeremy Cogan, who proposed Associated Students incorporate UCSDuncensored into its own operations, this theory isn’t too far out there.
Basically, Aguilar wants to take out UCSDuncensored before its user base reaches critical mass. If that’s his plan, he’d better get his team of lawyers ready. There are a few other Web sites he might want to go after, which also happen to use “”UCSD”” in the title.
One of the most popular is a UCSD forum on the “”LiveJournal”” Web blog site. It’s used like UCSDuncensored, except that it escapes Aguilar’s death grip because the “”UCSD”” abbreviation arrives at the end of its address instead of the beginning: http:// www.livejournal.com/community/ucsd.
The web is ridden with other unauthorized UCSD sites that somehow escaped Aguilar’s executioner’s axe. For a couple years, UCSDeeznuts.com was a spoof of UCSD’s main Web site, complete with plagiarized HTML code. The Koala used to advertise it on the cartoon Koala bear’s t-shirt on the front of every issue. The site seems to have come down on its own accord in the last couple months, but it was the best example of a site that damages the university’s good name.
Then there’s UCSD.com, which someone is actually selling for at least $688 ‹ probably more profit than UCSDuncensored would see in years.
One lucky person owns both UCSDsucks.com and UCSDsucks.org ‹ sites still under construction ‹ which even the most deluded person couldn’t believe would bolster the university’s image. It could be worse though ‹ “”UCSDCanGoToHell.com”” is still available.
If Aguilar were really worred about someone damaging the university’s good name, he’s got bigger fish to fry than UCSDuncensored, a small online community that wasn’t hurting anybody. It’s a shame Aguilar and the university feel the need to threaten their students with misdemeanor charges for building “”uncensored”” Web sites. “”Let there be light”” is supposed to be the University of California’s motto. When was the last time the university let light shine upon anything?
