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Student’s app violates policy

U Could Finish creator receives punishment

News Editor

Published: Sunday, July 29, 2012

Updated: Wednesday, August 8, 2012 13:08

Tim Arnold, a UCF marketing student who created a website called “U Could Finish” designed to ping students the moment a spot in a class opened up, has been found in violation of university policy and placed on academic probation until the end of the 2013 spring semester.

He is being punished for two counts of violation of the UCF Golden Rule Handbook under Section 14 “Misuse of Computing and Telecommunications Resources.” The Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities is also sanctioning a hold on his academic record. He must write a five- to eight-page paper on what he would do if he were placed in the role of a UCF administrator and had to update the system, take a $15 coaching session and write another five to eight pages about the outcome of the coaching session. He was also terminated from his treasurer position for the Society for Marketing Professionals through spring 2013.

Click here to see a PDF of the documents from Arnold's student conduct file.

The hearing took place Tuesday and was closed access. Two students and two faculty members were at the hearing. Student Government Association President Cortez Whatley served as Arnold’s witness at the hearing. Joel Hartman, vice provost for Information Technologies & Resources, brought the case against Arnold.

Chad Binette, associate director for UCF News & Information, said UCF staff and faculty cannot comment on a student conduct hearing. 

Arnold said he didn’t seek permission to make the U Could Finish app because he felt the administration was out of touch with the needs of the students and wouldn’t understand. He had tried once before to go through appropriate channels with a different app that showed students where available parking spaces were on campus and had been frustrated with the resistance he faced. 

“I went through all the appropriate channels, SGA was on board and we approached Parking Services, and they thought students wouldn’t use it,” Arnold said about his parking app design.

Arnold surveyed 172 people and said that 90 percent of the students would use the parking app.

“I put in a lot of time trying to work with the different departments to make it work, and it ended up being a huge waste of time,” Arnold said. 

Arnold said he was just trying to give back to the university that had made him a better person by creating the U Could Finish app.

Arnold said he did charge a fee, but had he been trying to make a for-profit company, it would have been the worst ever. 

“I put in $1,000 and made $8,” Arnold said. 

The app cost 99 cents, but he gave away free promotional codes. At the time the app was shut down, 46 classes were being monitored, two of which were $3.99-paid monitors. The app came with a slider bar that allowed a student to increase or decrease the frequency of a server check. It cost 99 cents for every 4 hours and $9 to check every minute with a spectrum in between. 

According to an email in Arnold’s student conduct file, which Arnold provided, a student began a similar service called “Knight Tracker,” which logged into myUCF every six minutes and ran searches. This student, whose name was redacted from the letter, received a request to cease and desist operation of his service. Arnold said he never received such a letter and did not have the opportunity to stop his service before a conduct hearing was scheduled. 

Arnold said he essentially gave the program away for free and with the exception of not seeking written permission from the Provost and Executive Vice President or his or her designee as written in section B(3) of Use of Information Technologies and Resources, didn’t do anything wrong. 

“I found a student that was paid $150 to drop their class,” Arnold said. “People are already doing this monetary exchange; it’s just crazy how bad students want some of these classes.”

Arnold said the app was designed to mitigate the cost of a student not getting the class they needed. 

He said in light of the recent outpouring of support from the UCF community, he will likely appeal the sanctions. One of the ways he can do that is by discovery of new and significant evidence that could affect the outcome of the hearing.

“I am very certain there is new evidence out there that has come up during the hearing. The same people that have the information I need are the ones punishing me, so I can’t get it easily,” Arnold said. 

Courtney Gilmartin, communications coordinator for UCF News & Information, said UCF’s schedule search page was accessed 220,000 times as often as every 60 seconds between mid-December and June. Arnold doesn’t agree.

“I think it’s completely made up,” Arnold said.

Arnold has seven days from the date of the sanction letter to appeal.

“I disagree with their numbers,” Arnold said. “Even the people on the panel said that I didn’t do anything wrong — I was just in violation of university policy.” 

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29 comments

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Goldenegg
Wed Aug 1 2012 10:55
Interesting timeline of events; thanks for sharing Tim. You seem to have ticked off the UCF hierarchy & probably never stood a chance during your hearing. The University wields all the power here & will not allow anyone to intrude on that power & authority. Right or wrong, that is really what is at stake here, not whether you "slowed down myUSF for everyone ."

The 1st commenter is very biased toward the University's point of view. His speculations about your intent & sarcasm about your attitude are callous & prejudicial. Anonymous said "Still he brushes off any concern UCF has about its systems, and I think he carried that attitude into the hearing." The University chose to pursue the issue in a very closed way (not returning your calls or sharing specifics), so your reaction is not really surprising. Many others have questions about the numbers tossed around. By trying to offer a defense & using free speech you've added to the threat they feel. I think he & UCF are more upset about the money (charging for the service) & power issues. They are obviously not going to tolerate either.

It stinks that you have to write papers & get coaching, but those are minor inconveniences. The loss of leadership positions (i.e. Treasurer for the Society for Marketing Professionals) & the permanent inclusion of 2 counts of student misconduct on your record are harsh, especially in the current job market. Gotta say though, maybe the folks at Google or Facebook would view it as a badge of honor.

Tim Arnold
Tue Jul 31 2012 10:08
Hey guys, Tim Arnold here.

First of all, I wanted to let you know I put together a timeline that shows purely factually the sequence of events, as I know there is some confusion of the sequence of events: http://ucouldfinish.com/conduct/

This has been a long and interesting thread, but I'd like to address some key points:

1) Taking public record freely available online and turning it into something useful isn't illegal, nor is making money from it (even though that wasn't my intent). Look at Zillow, Google, or even news sources like CFF. They take a public record that is available freely to anyone, modify it into something more useful, convienient and concise, a step that takes time and money to do and likewise saves the consumer time and money. Then they make it re-available to the public. That's why it's called "providing a service".

2) The entire debate seems to hinge on that I "slowed down myUCF for everyone else." I have asked again and again for them to procure data to prove this, and they have denied my requests. They threw out a number (220,000) that sounds like a lot (it's not for a computer anyway, modern CPUs handle a hundred billion of instructions per second - I know this isn't indicative to myUCF's architecture, just proving a point that large quantities don't mean a lot when talking about computers) and won't allow me to access the information I need to defend myself. In my hearing, Dr. Hartman himself said he could not prove that my system was attributable to any slowdowns of their servers or myUCF. Finally, the Enterprise Systems and Operations page of CS&T's site says that the servers are monitored 24/7 by staff and software - if my service functioned like a DDoS attack, why was it not shut down in December when I tested the far more resource intensive version?

3) I don't know why you dismiss my intent. Intent is everything, it's what takes an accident to manslaughter. I did not intend to break any rules or subvert any policy. I simply thought (now as I understand, incorrectly) that I could create this tool externally without repercussion and immediately start helping students get in their classes, rather than wait months/years/lifetimes for CS&T to come up with their own solution. That is it. I like building stuff that helps people, and as the Creed says, using my talents to enrich the human experience. Why I am accused of lying about that I have a hard time understanding.

Anonymous
Mon Jul 30 2012 20:06
Again what is excessive about it? They are charging him 15 dollars for a class, a lot less than a UCF parking ticket, and I believe it is a one day thing. They are making him write two essays about his actions. Again, if you read the report, their justification, besides him breaking the rules, was that he isn't accepting responsibility for his actions, or the implications from them. Like I said, it sounds like he went to the meeting with the the attitude of "what of it?".

Once again, you said his intent was not to damage the systems, but that is part of the results from his actions. Which appears to be the reason they want him to write an essay, to realize the bigger picture and not just his goals.

Like I said, he probably didn't do any physical damage, but degraded performance for other students. Which is part of why his attempt to sound like a student hero is bad. While his service would clearly give paying students an advantage, any student without the necessary funds would instead be stuck with the UCF site running slower than usual due to his program constantly hammering the site.

I never said he was trying to anonymously take over the site. Posting to popular sites proves nothing. He posted on one site and received criticism about his program and the way he went about implementing it. Go to the original source, the reddit thread, and read the concerns students had. They reflect exactly what UCF brought him up about.

People post online all the time talking about illegal things. Some even post about "420 friendly" places to rent. Just because he talked about it, doesn't mean it was legal. If you read the reddit thread students point out how it is illegal, and he brushes it off saying he thinks the wording is "vague".

I guess my choice in analogy was taken the wrong way. He was caught doing something he shouldn't, now he is upset. Maybe UCF could have responded quicker, but going to CFF to force a response was probably not wise on his part.

I think a better way to look at this, is UCF is the baker, it made the cookies, Tim asked for a sample, then walked outside and sold the cookie. He simply repackaged (texting) the information UCF supplies for free, but charged students for it. Which is against the policy, and something he should have researched first before paying someone to design a system the relies entirely on UCF's information and network to function.

Anonymous
Mon Jul 30 2012 19:20
Actually I think the following is excessive:

" He is being punished for two counts of violation of the UCF Golden Rule Handbook under Section 14 "Misuse of Computing and Telecommunications Resources." The Office of Student Rights and Responsibilities is also sanctioning a hold on his academic record. He must write a five- to eight-page paper on what he would do if he were placed in the role of a UCF administrator and had to update the system, take a $15 coaching session and write another five to eight pages about the outcome of the coaching session. He was also terminated from his treasurer position for the Society for Marketing Professionals through spring 2013."

I do not claim to know what impact his app had on UCF's servers, but without data neither does anyone outside the UCF department that brought him up on charges. They say the impact was detrimental & they certainly have responsibility of protecting it, but damaging the system was clearly not his intent. His calls to UCF to learn what caused his lock-out reportedly went unanswered. That is unacceptable. He wasn't anonymously trying to take over UCF's server. By posting about the service on various sites, it only strengthens his argument that he believed he was doing nothing improper. If that had been the case, there would be no reason for him to not charge for the service. As you say, he was reaching for a cookie, but the jar was publicly accessible.

I hope UCF figures out how to implement the improvements they are studying. In the meantime, it is sad that this student is getting swatted hard & taught to stop reaching for cookies, when he's obviously a talented baker.

Anonymous
Mon Jul 30 2012 18:41
They probably blocked his access once his server was flagged for attacking the UCF site. His program is similar to a Denial of Service attack, where you overload a computer with external requests so that it is unable to perform its regular operation. That might not have been his intent, but with UCF bringing up "misuse of telecommunications" I believe that is how they saw it. In that situation, they need to immediately block the source of the attack. Seems reasonable to me, you don't ask the attacker to stop and hope they comply.

His system did disrupt normal operations according to UCF. While it might not be physical damage, it does cost students their time when the site is slower than usual due to his service making extra requests.

I think he should defend himself, but he is playing like he was offering a free service, and only wanted to help students. He was in it for the money. Why would he front over 600 dollars if he didn't think he would make it back? While he is saying it was free, and didn't make any money, he has stated it was free for people that got the promotion code, which was given out while he worked out the bugs. He was already setup to start charging people 9 dollars a class for the highest tier service he had in place. Something most articles are overlooking. He even admits two people already signed up at the 3.99 price before it got shutdown.

He is the kid that got caught with his hand in the cookie jar. His education from UCF is helping him try to persuade the public to side with him. While this can be a good tactic, UCF has final say about it's policy and enforcement. He is doing the same thing he did wrong in the beginning. Instead of talking to the right people, and getting the issue straightened out, he is going for a media show and trying to make a scene to get his way. It's like a kid screaming for candy in a grocery store. This was brought up in the reddit thread, that he chose not to talk to UCF or the network group, and how that was a bad idea. Now he is going to every media outlet to say he is just a good guy, and is being punished unfairly. He didn't read the rules, didn't contact the right people, charged money for information the university provides freely, and you think writing 2 papers and 15 dollar class is too harsh for someone that tried to make money off free information, and make students spend even more money? Ha.

Anonymous
Mon Jul 30 2012 18:08
Why didn't the University give Mr. Arnold notice to cease and desist? While ignorance of UCF's policies does not excuse his actions, his behavior did not damage or sabatoge the computer system or involve hacking. If he has no history of disruptive, negative acts & has complied with university policies to this point in his collegiante career, then I don't understand the tone of your remarks & the punishment does indeed seem over the top. Your distaste for Arnold's efforts to defendi himself is surprising. If he is using marketing strategies to explain his experience, I think that actually speaks well for the success of his academic growth & of UCF's College of Business.
Anonymous
Mon Jul 30 2012 16:58
UCF is responding to the need, read the materials linked. UCF states a wait list system is in the works, but was on hold because of discussions on how classes should be filled. While UCF could provide the data, it is stated "..the University has the final say on what constitutes normal, authorized operation". So no matter what the data shows, they can stick with it not being "normal, authorized operation".

The punishment seems right. From what I have read, Tim is really doing well marketing himself as the victim. While admitting he didn't know the rules entirely, and did not bring his ideas forward to the higher ups at UCF. He keeps saying he was doing it for the students, yet forgets to mention he charged up to 9 dollars per course. He is a marketing major, you have to give him that.

Still he brushes off any concern UCF has about its systems, and I think he carried that attitude into the hearing. I believe this, because you can read the end of their reason for punishment: "The student does not accept responsibility for his actions, and has not considered the implications of them. We recommend disciplinary probation so that he can reflect on the impacts that his actions have on others."

It sounds like they want him to write an essay about how he should have gone about implementing his system, compared to how he did it. Also why his method did not take into account anything outside of his own goal. I only state this, as some people think UCF wants him to tell him how to do their job. It appears UCF already had a system in the works, and this service just threw a wrench into the regular operations of the site for all the students that didn't pay for his service.

Anonymous
Mon Jul 30 2012 16:16
It appears that Mr. Arnold was forced to speculate because the specific data evidence was not made available. It seems odd that the school can make their claims & target him as the culprit (doing a little of their own speculation perhaps?) without providing these records.

While it seams Arnold incorrectly thought his app did not violate university policy when he developed it, it seems odd that the school did not respond to his requests for information when they shut down his service. In the TV news interview he reported using a guest account to access UCF's site. It would seem he could have created another guest account, but refrained once his was blocked & learned that his app would have issues with UCF.

The punishment is excessive. Even if his intent was to make a few bucks providing a needed service for students who are obviously extremely frustrated with the current registration process, perhaps the fact that there is such a "market" supports his statement that campus administration is disconnected & uninterested or unwilling to respond to the need. Perhaps it is not his "disdain for UCF's policies" which should be under review, but why the school has not tried to assist students in this needed area, especially as this is apparently the 2nd student to attempt to offer a fix.

Anonymous
Mon Jul 30 2012 14:55
It appears Tim Arnold is speculating a lot:
"I think it's completely made up," he thinks, but doesn't know. "I disagree with their numbers," yet he can't prove that they are wrong, and admitted previously he doesn't know the internal process of how UCF generates the course information. While they should provide to him how they got those numbers, he is in no position to say they are wrong without having any idea how their system works.

"Arnold said he didn't seek permission to make the U Could Finish app because he felt the administration was out of touch with the needs of the students and wouldn't understand. He had tried once before to go through appropriate channels with a different app that showed students where available parking spaces were on campus and had been frustrated with the resistance he faced."

That is great attitude. He didn't think the administration knew what the students needed, so instead of presenting the project to them and explaining why it was needed, he did it knowingly without their consent. Just because you get shot down once, doesn't excuse you from having to go through the same process again. It is unfortunate, but that is how the system works.

"Arnold said he was just trying to give back to the university"

I don't think charging students for information the is freely available is giving back. He was really only giving an advantage to the students that gave him money, as it would check more often. This wasn't a kind gesture, but a way to make money in the end. He could argue it wasn't profitable yet, which is what he says, but that doesn't mean his long term goal wasn't about making money off UCF students using information UCF provided for free.

"Arnold said the app was designed to mitigate the cost of a student not getting the class they needed. "

What part of charging them money for this information mitigates the cost for the student? It might lessen the cost for some that are crazy enough to pay the amount he quoted, but most just watch carefully, and get the classes they need.

"Arnold said he essentially gave the program away for free"

"Essentially" makes me laugh. Did you forget the part where he was charging for it, up to nine dollars? How is charging for a service, the same as giving it away for free? It is a marketing strategy (from a marketing major) to get people interested in the service by giving out some free invites. Everyone after the first wave though still has to pay. Also this free wave was a test wave, which he mentioned on other sites. So I can't see it being feasible to charge test dummies.

Can Central Florida Future verify some of the numbers from Arnold? Going to the reddit post that was mentioned previously, he stated "I've invested over $600 into building the system". Then in the Click Orlando comments, someone going by Tim Arnold claimed "I had invested nearly $1,000 into its creation".

"Arnold said he never received such a letter and did not have the opportunity to stop his service before a conduct hearing was scheduled."

That seems to be because he was running the service, and opened it to students, before contacting UCF, as was stated at the beginning of the article. The other service, as far as I know, was never publicly available, but they approached UCF about the idea first it would seem. Arnold has claimed on reddit he went to students and a professor to discuss the idea, but never got any approval from UCF's higher ups or the networking group, this article clearly shows that he has a disdain for UCF's policies and procedures, and felt like he didn't have to bother with them.

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