So you’ve been caught! Not caught cheating, but you have been caught looking at pornography in a University of Memphis computer lab. Shame, shame, shame on you!
What will happen next? Will you be banned from campus computer labs for the rest of your college career? Is there even a campus policy regarding porn on the Internet?
Well, yes there is.
According to The U of M TigerLAN Lab Usage Guidelines, if a user is caught viewing or downloading pornographic materials, they may be required to illustrate their educational purpose for viewing the content.
“Lab attendants are authorized to make this inquiry upon a complaint from another user in the lab,” the guidelines stated. “Lab attendants are authorized to require a user who cannot demonstrate educational purpose to cease using the equipment for viewing or downloading sexually explicit materials.”
According to Valeria Wiggins, coordinator for the Smith and McWherter Labs, “Basically, if you’re viewing material that is sexually explicit and a person is offended by the material, that person can choose to make a complaint to the lab attendant on duty. Most of the students who are caught are very embarrassed, and they usually comply with the lab attendant’s request to stop viewing the material.”
According to Zach Davis, a lab attendant at The U of M, some computer users download pornography and make the mistake of saving it to the computer’s hard drive. By saving the material to the hard drive, lab attendants can see exactly what the computer users have been viewing.
“There is stuff on (the hard drive) all the time,” Davis said. “If there’s not a video, there’s pictures.”
Davis has also witnessed McWherter lab users viewing pornographic films found on the Internet.
“There is a bunch of people that come in here late at night to watch porn on the Net,” Davis said. “I came in here once at 4 o’clock in the morning to type a paper, and the whole back row was watching porn.”
Beau Staples, an MIS major and lab attendant, does not understand why some students use the labs to download sexually explicit material.
“I don’t understand,” Staples said. “Those people make me so sick. Why can’t they go home and do it?”
