[rather scathing rant]

So I just got back from a Cyber Security Club meeting at my school.  I decided to sign up and attend a meeting, expecting maybe 10-15 really nerdy people like myself that live, sleep, eat, and breathe computers, or at least a healthy population of people who know about computers.

I can say I was severely disappointed.

I went in and there were probably 60 people in the club, I can point out maybe 10-15 of which qualified under my expected population.  The rest of the group were people that I’m familiar with the type.

I must give an example.  This woman WAS here this evening too mind you.  This woman was in the Cyber Security Program and was in a Java class I took last semester.  Java…as in the programming language that’s excellent for programmers but a hit to take for non-programmers.  There were no prerequisites for this course.

So this woman is in a full blown programming course and we’re maybe 2-3 weeks into the class (maybe it was prior but I think it was like 2-3 weeks in) and she turns and ASKS THE PROFESSOR HOW TO SAVE A FILE!!!!!

IS THIS THE KIND OF PERSON THAT’S GOING TO BE RESPONSIBLY FOR NATIONAL INFRASTRUCTURE SECURITY?!?

And worse yet, aside from the 10-15 people that I pointed out, the rest qualify either under the same classification as this woman or just the hyper students that aren’t really into computers but are just there to play video games.

Ok so maybe they want a job change.  Frankly I think if you haven’t had anything to do with computers up until this point that you shouldn’t be going for issues of national security, but maybe I’m missing something.  I’ll give them at least the benefit of the doubt.

So they were also electing club officers and one of them noted how he was in the club last year and they talked about cyber security but they never actually did any of this (he wanted to setup a lab, which I agree with), but really, is the cyber security club just a couple of talks and a lot of people playing video games?

I came to the club because the description was (and I quote):

Inspires learning of all things technological through trial and error, reverse engineering and professionals within the field.

And none of this was even apparent that they did any of this.

Maybe I’m missing some huge fact but really…..this is absurd.

[/rather scathing rant]