Pissed Off At My School!

[Valarie]

So in my down time in between classes or meeting with my students I like to get on this site at school on my OWN laptop. I of course use the universities WiFi, because it is free, I'm going in debt to be in school might as well use the WiFi. When I got on today I was furious to find out that my university blocked this site because it "violates the universities policy for aloud web access." :eek: In short someone sitting at a desk at the Department of Information Security saw the keyword, "crossdressers" and blocked access to this site. This forum helps me when I have a tough day, when I want to here how you all are doing in your daily lives, and to share how I am. The positive feedback and advice we give each other makes my day. It just bothers me because the day before I was on and commenting on some post like I usually do. Now I do not know what to do; should I call Information Security and ask that they not block this sight since it does not really violate any codes and policies since I read them all today and out myself at the same time, and if they say no should I take it to the Department of Students Rights and file discrimination claim also outing myself, or do I just ignore it and not draw attention to myself?

[Jenniferathome]

Internet blocking is a blunt tool. There is no thinking behind it. It's their network and you are accessing it for free. they can do what they like.

[Emogene]

The question is does the school also block access to GLBT sites. What about women's issue sites? What about all those other support sites available to all and sundry who are not part of the main stream?

If they are discriminating against cross dressers (transgender persons) but not the other groups, perhaps you should ask the University administration if that was their intent or was this just the over zealous action of one or more uniformed persons taken without the benefit of legal council or administration approval. You could contact the on campus GLBT group, I suspect they would be interested.

If you are willing to make an issue, a public issue, of the action call the American Civil Liberties Union.

Your call if you are willing to out yourself, if not, be very careful! Very, very careful!

[Jaylyn]

I agree that they can set their own rules but there is another way if you have a I phone that gets the internet then problem solved or surely there's some coffee shop or restaurant close enough that has free access to the net lots of cafe's are offering that today. I wouldn't out myself till I think of all my choices and then decide if you want to fight that battle, that I'm afraid they'll win.

[JennyMarie]

As an IT person....

It is their network and I'm not exactly sure it could be considered "public" (I'd have to know their specific setup and basic rules). As such, they can do what they want with it.

Further, just randomly seeing if they block certain sites but not others doesn't help. The server at my work that is meant to block certain web content isn't perfect. It often blocks or allows sites it shouldn't.

Additional to that... depending on the solution they use, it may do automatic updates from the developer and that may be the cause of the change of what sites it is or isn't blocking (besides their manually adding or removing sites).

Which brings me to the final point... if they manually added it, it's because they saw the traffic to it. Which also means they've seen your PC's IP address.... Which is why I will never come to a site like this at work.

[ShelbyDawn]

I agree it seems a little heavy handed.
As Jennifer said. it is their network and, right or wrong, they have the right to control access as they see fit.

Whatever you do, make sure you are fighting the right battle and that you have thoroughly thought through the consequences.

Cute pic, BTW. :)

:hugs:

Shelby

[dana digs sweaters]

It's their network and you are accessing it for free. they can do what they like.
And who PAID for the Library, Network & WIFI?

[Valarie]

I pay tuition and fees for services to the school so I pay for internet access. Maybe I am just on edge since I am graduating and will be applying to Law School, but it is not their own network, it is a part of the university of Texas system, and as a public university that receives State and Federal funding easily it is Title IX discrimination. Maybe I will just have to get on here when I get home at night :(

[heatherdress]

You should ignore it. Find another stress reliever.

If you want to out yourself - simply do it because you want to do it independent of the blocked CD site.

[Lorileah]

it is Title IX discrimination.

well since you are thinking of Law School, now would be a good time to start researching this.

I don't think Title IX applies because it isn't a sexual(male/female) discrimination. Having said that, there is a question of allowing the students access to sites in order to research which is a major part of the reason they have the WiFi system
You could argue on that basis and argue that this is not a sexually based site, that it is support. That is if you want them to know it is you and what you do. Title IX would apply IF the blocked men from using it while allowing women to view and vice versa. I honestly doubt Texas has a transgender discrimination policy

[Beverley Sims]

Don't get mixed up in petty politics, just let it slide and find another portal.
You like your job, don't you?

[nvlady]

Send a typed letter to the dean and complain about discrimination. Use another students name and address.

[Ellie52]

Download TOR browser to your laptop. This encrypts everything you do and even allocates you an ip address in another country. You can setup TOR to go through a proxy so you should be ok.
Any website you visit will be seen as coming from the exit node of tne TOR network, which could be anywhere in the world. I use it regularly.
give it a try for anything you want to keep secret......Ellie

[Joanne f]

I agree with the things that Lorileah is saying , if you do not mind in letting them know about your own situation as I am sure that they will soon work out what two and two adds up to then it might be a good idea to point out that this particular forum is a help,support and information forum that has a none sexual or dating nature to it and that there must be more than one person that attends the university/school that may need or get helpful information from it as universities are all about leaning and leaning about ones self is apart of the process .
I personally would not go straight in and hit them with rules and regulations at this point as a polite conversation can some times work wonders without getting peoples back up providing that the other person is susceptible to polite conversations.
Wouldn't it be nice if the education departments would recognise that this was a safe forum to allow access to it but I do realise that you have to put your personal life in the firing range to push for this to happen which is not an easy thing to do and some would say not a wise thing to do so it just depends on how far you personally want to go with it .

[Rachelakld]

I'd recommend passing this "blocking info" to the university GLBT group (especially if your a supporter of the group) and get them to pressure the IT people to unblock the site

[sandra-leigh]

I second sending a note to the university GBLT group.

Lorileah, Title IX is considered to apply, at least in some jurisdictions. "sex discrimination" is considered to include gender discrimination in 10th Circuit (if I recall the circuit number correctly.) I do not recall whether Valarie considers herself to be transgender or not; if she does then she would have a Title IX argument.

[Andrea J]

Can you connect your mobile phone to your laptop and get internet through your mobile? You could still have the convenience of using your laptop and it would be your own private connection.

[Ellie52]

TOR is the most secure encrypted internet connection you can use. 10,000 terrorists cant be wrong. It encrypts data from your laptop to the exit node and randomly changes exit nodes so your IP will change. If you test the connection you may be in France, then Germany then the grand ole USof A.Give it a go - youll never go back....E

[bridget thronton]

Surprised to hear a university using filtering software - most do not

[Lexi_83]

You can use a proxy site like kproxy.

[Katie Oxford]

I'd recommend passing this "blocking info" to the university GLBT group (especially if your a supporter of the group) and get them to pressure the IT people to unblock the site

This seems the obvious approach to me - drop them an anonymous email pointing out that they've blocked this site, which is not in any way porn, rather a support group. Explain your motivation for anonymity.

If they are worth their salt at all they'll raise the matter. Which may not cause anything to happen (their network, their rules - and this is hardly work-related ), but at least the message will get through.

But here's an alternative idea to make it work-related - find someone using the same network to research crossdressing behaviour from an academic point of view - there may not be anyone, but it's worth a punt. See if they will put in a request for this site to be made accessible.

On the other side of the coin, as has been pointed out upthread, is accessing this site on a university network a good idea when one is in the closet? You're effectively laying a trail of clues to your door. It's not exactly an equivalent situation, but I would never ever consider accessing this site from work, even on my own laptop over WiFi. Only from my home computer where I pay for the connection.

[Aprilrain]

Surprised to hear a university using filtering software - most do not

It's Texas....are you still surprised?

[ShannonIL]

Odds are they didn't actually block anything. Most of these proxy access things are based on black/whitelists provided by a vendor, and those lists are based on categorization. My guess is that the most recent update probably classified the site as something they actively block, like porn.

Obviously we all know this isn't a porn site, but a python script spidering thru the web categorizing websites? Who knows.

The good news is, it can be overridden usually. I agree with Rachel, bring it up to the university GLBT group, they'll get it sorted.

[BOBBI G.]

Law school? What a great topic for a legal research paper. The discrimination of the transgender person on college campuses. a rather broad topic that could be trimmed.

Bobbi

[Deedee Skyblue]

nvlady, I hope you aren't serious.

Deedee

[Vickie_CDTV]

If they receive public funds, they may be required by law to block access to porn sites (as some public libraries are)... and as such they just set their filter to "high" (figuratively speaking) and just have it over-zealously block anything that sounds like it might be sexually oriented (probably blocks access to some sites with breast cancer research, for example.) Among other things, they probably use a blacklist/whitelist provided by a third party that blocks anything referencing crossdressing (and the folks who make those lists, most if not all being your typical John Q. Cisgender, just assume anything related to crossdressing is porn.)

One can jump to conclusions about some sort of discrimination, but seriously, it is almost certainly just an overaggressive filter they are using, and they probably have no idea that non-porn TV/TS sites are blocked (if they even know such things exist to begin with.)

One can always try using a proxy, it might work. After all, it is what teenagers do to access naughty sites when they are on a connection with a filter.

[PatMatoole]

send a typed letter to the dean and complain about discrimination. Use another students name and address.

wtf?????

[Caden Lane]

I agree Pat, that was rather questionable ethicly, and does nothing for the TGmovement. It may be more appropo to address the letter anonymously indicating that you are transgendered and do not wish to be outed, but give them an email not linked to your male self for any correspondence, and explain that to them as well.

[Ellie52]

There is no need to go to the embarrassment of writing letters. Just use the internet via an encrypted circuit. Once installed you can surf to your hearts content with total secrecy. I encourage anyone (even if you dont understand computers) to download and install TOR Browser.

[5150 Girl]

I would do is go straight to the IT dpt. and ask, "What is it about this site that is deemed unacceptable?" Decide from there weather on not it is a discrimination thing.
I should also add that I have found the world of academia to be accepting of alternative life styles. I am full time on campus

[Kelly DeWinter]

Valarie;

Stand up for your rights, Our local library also blocked this site. I requested a meeting with the regional office for our library system. Explained to them the issue and why I felt it was important to allow access to the site (it was well moderated, icon of the community, respected posters (tam, and other moderators my find their hat sizes a bit bigger reading this LOL) etc etc. I even showed some of the more well thought out and discussed threads. They agreed it was a positive community web site and granted access as an exception on their server level.

All it takes is presenting a clear argument for why access should be granted. It just takes someone willing to present that argument.

[Michelle.M]

Send a typed letter to the dean and complain about discrimination. Use another students name and address.

Oh, yeah, that's brilliant advice! Put someone else's reputation on the line because you don't have the stones to stand up for yourself. :/

Valarie, check with the LGBT student center and see if they know what the university's policy is on site blocking. I'm also in the UT system and I know that the university's DIVERSITY policy is very progressive, but that may have nothing to do with their INTERNET USAGE policy. The two don't always support each other.

And the LGBT center may want to get involved in this issue and help the school refine the blocking policy (if that is the real issue) so this could be a big win for everyone, with you as the driving force behind it.

They may have a variety of other reasons for site blocking that have nothing to do with access to LGBT information. Could be they're trying to keep bandwidth use to a manageable level by filtering a wide variety of entertainment sites (and this may be seen as entertainment or, depending on meta data, even as porn), and perhaps there's something in this site's meta data that didn't get seen by the system until you logged on and their servers saw it. In that case it's probably an automatic function of keyword site blocking and not a specific action, although this site could probably be set by IT to override the filters for users to have access.

I don't necessarily agree with this "don't make waves" advice, but this may not be an issue that deserves getting all worked up about. In other words, I wouldn't just assume that you're being blocked for sinister reasons or that discrimination is a factor. Go find out the details - get the facts, and then proceed armed with knowledge.


It's Texas....are you still surprised?

* sigh * Please. Can't you say something constructive instead of just offering up a different flavor of prejudice?