[510] in Resnet-Forum
Re: Housecalls...and liability issues
daemon@ATHENA.MIT.EDU (Dane Spearing)
Thu Feb 23 20:08:41 1995
Date: Thu, 23 Feb 1995 16:51:58 -0800
From: Dane Spearing <dane@rescomp.stanford.edu>
To: qtjrq@mailbox.syr.edu, resnet-forum@MIT.EDU
>We've noticed that with the advent of ResNet, we are using Residential
>Consultants more and more to diagnose problems that go beyond the
>applications questions....and delve more into system hardware and
>software. Often the "why doesn't my room connection work?" questions
>turn out to be problems with system files....
This does seem to be an inevitable evolution of the RCC position.
>Does anyone have a policy in place that deals with liability issues?
>What if a consultant, in an effort to fix a printing problem, for
>example makes a mistake and trashes a key file... Does anyone have
>Residential Consultants take care of virus problems? Do people sign
>release forms before the consultants will start work?
>
>We've not had any of these sorts of problems....but I wonder if it's
>just a matter of time...
At present, the Stanford RCC's do spend a significant fraction of
their time help students with their in-room connection problems.
And, as you mention, these routinely turn out to be local configuration
problems rather than true "network problems". We don't have any
release forms of any kind (yet). However, our standing policy is
that RCC's will not open up people's machines for them (in any official
manner) to help them install network cards, resolve IRQ conflicts, etc.
We simply don't want to have to deal with the liability of possible
hardware damage. However, some RCC's will help students install their
own network cards, etc, with the understanding that they are doing it as
a friend and not as an RCC. So far, this seems to have worked quite well.
But, Stanford is very much a Macintosh based campus, and so we haven't
had a large number of PC-install cases, although the percentage of
non-Mac users is growing.
As for software issues, our RCC's will indeed help people try and
recover lost files, deal with virus problems, etc. We haven't had
any problems thus far with people complaining that "the RCC trashed my
hard drive". I think people realize that the RCC's are there to try
and help them, and wouldn't do anything intentionally malicious.
Dane Spearing --- Residential Computing --- Stanford University
dane@rescomp.stanford.edu -- (415) 723-4800
http://rescomp.stanford.edu/~dane/dane.html
