[yourcelf]

If you'd like MIT students who were impacted by the administration's callous lack of support, consider:

- the MBTA "hackers", 2008: http://www.openmediaboston.org/content/mbta-suit-against-mit...

- Star Simpson, 2007: http://www.boston.com/news/globe/city_region/breaking_news/2...

- Ryan McKinley's "Government Information Awareness", 2003: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Government_Information_Awarene...

- Andrew "Bunnie" Huang, 2002, XBox hacker: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Andrew_Huang

- Ladyada, 2002: http://www.ladyada.net/pub/research.html

- David LaMacchia, 1994: http://cd.textfiles.com/group42/WAREZ/LAMACCHI.HTM

And these are only a few cases that made headlines; there are many additional controversies handled more quietly. The point remains that the MIT General Counsel's office exists to protect the institute, not the students, even while MIT's culture rewards innovative, boundary-pushing work.

The point at issue here is that MIT needs a legal support structure for such students commensurate with its encouragement of the work.

[dobbsbob]

I don't know of any university that would stand up for their students. My old school doesn't even do tenure anymore so they can muzzle the staff, and is run by successive former political hacks who all chaired some partisan fundraising society and were parachuted into the dean's office through cronyism. The associate and vice presidents are real estate speculators and lobbyists or did party fundraising who've been busy building large private condos on endowment land to sell to foreign investors in order to personally profit.

Defending a student from feds means risking their careers since they only got these positions through political connections. All of them go on to the Dept of Foreign Affairs or some other government appointed position. This is just a stepping stone for them, who cares about students.

[goldbeck]

Definitely! What's pretty cool is that this is exactly the response of MIT administration as well http://tech.mit.edu/V134/N7/tidbit.html

[sliverstorm]

Your parents point is not that MIT has done no wrong, but that Swartz is not the right example.