sexual harassment

[nudel]

i bought a new computer for my lab. its for a public workstation, and has to be hooked up to the net. its for one function, compile data for equipment usage. so i come into work today, and theres this page on the screen that says "enlarge your penis by up to 3 inches" i was amused. then pissed because these people are suppose to be grad students. so i was talking to fellow staff about this. i was informed that i would be liable for sexual harassment, because i am the supervisor. wtf, so anyone know how to make the program thats running the only available function. ie, not being able to go to start and pick a program to run.

[537]

What OS is installed?

[nudel]

Originally posted by 537@Jan 29 2003, 11:36 AM
What OS is installed?
xp

[537]

If you have the application constantly running in the background, just lock the workstation.

You'll have to be the only one that knows the login credentials, though.

[achtungbaby]

Are you male or female?

[nudel]

male
so if some outside user complains, say, everytime i use their computer, it has porn on it, i guess i'm in deep

[nudel]

thanks for the help 537

[achtungbaby]

It's an interesting question. Is this really sexual harassment though...?

[nudel]

i was told, that since i know about the problem, if i don't stop it, i'm liable. a woman has the right to work in an environment void of offensive material.

[achtungbaby]

Originally posted by nudel@Jan 29 2003, 11:54 AM
i was told, that since i know about the problem, if i don't stop it, i'm liable. a woman has the right to work in an environment void of offensive material.
Yeah, I guess you should listen to those who know. I just wasn't aware that ads for penis enlargement were offensive. Does that mean breast augmentation ads are offensive to males?

[ism]

Originally posted by achtungbaby@Jan 29 2003, 03:08 PM
Yeah, I guess you should listen to those who know. I just wasn't aware that ads for penis enlargement were offensive. Does that mean breast augmentation ads are offensive to males?
The way some sexual harassment policies are written, I'd say so. They tend to be gender-neutral.

Unfortunately, the buck stops at the supervisor and nudel would be liable if he was negligent. Since he knows about the problem he needs to take some reasonable measure or at least be able to pass the blame to someone. Most computer labs I've seen simply force the user to close the session, and the hard drive gets wiped clean, and is reinstalled over the network on reboot. The other option is to make people sign in before they can use it, and sign out when they leave, so that way you know who left offending stuff up, also would probably help if they read the lab policy on offending actions. Another option would be to restrict what the user can do, but I'm not familiar with XP. If it's anything like 2000, you can change the user rights and configure the Start Menu so that they can't run certain programs, but I'm sure that can be circumvented.

[achtungbaby]

Originally posted by ism@Jan 29 2003, 01:12 PM
Unfortunately, the buck stops at the supervisor and nudel would be liable if he was negligent.
Yep. Don't take a risk -- keep your job. And there are ways of assigning specific user rights in XP and your average computer lab user (I would think) probably won't know how to get around 'em.

[nudel]

thanks all
it upsets me that i have to take this responsibility.