Administration demands cease, desist from Ultrinsic gambling website

Ultrinsic Motivator Inc., a website that allows students to gamble on their grades, is under fire from the IU Administration, which is demanding a cease and desist from the website.

Associate General Counsel Beth Cate, an in-house attorney for IU, sent a letter last week to the founder of the website asking to break their connection with IU.

Ultrinsic is a website that encourages students to use their own money to bet on their academic expectations.

Students must provide Ultrinsic with their username and password for their online school account, which authorizes “Ultrinsic to access the account and to view and record any information in your account,” according to the Terms of Use provided by the site.

These terms violate IU’s policy on prohibiting the sharing of credentials, Cate said.

“Encouraging students to provide Ultrinsic with their credentials promotes violations of University policy by the students, which are punishable under our student code of conduct and threatens the privacy, security and integrity of student records and University computing systems,” she wrote in the letter. “Any access to Indiana University student accounts or other systems will be deemed an unauthorized access of University records and facilities, and will be addressed accordingly under applicable law.”

The “About Us” section of the website lists schools including Michigan State University and New York University where Ultrinsic is currently available.

However, Cate said it is in no way endorsed by IU.

“In the letter, I asked for a clarification that this is not something through IU,” she said.

The letter calls for a response indicating whether or not Ultrinsic has received any IU account credentials and identifying the student accounts that are involved so they can be changed. The letter also asks Ultrinsic to stop asking students to share their accounts with the company and to modify its terms of use. IU also asks Ultrinsic to include an announcement on its home page informing students they are not to supply the company with any University account information.

Cate said she has also spoken to colleagues at North Carolina State University and Oregon State University who have sent similar letters to Ultrinsic in the past few weeks.

“My thought was I don’t know whether the people at Ultrinsic had thought this through or not,” Cate said. “I don’t know them from a hole in the wall. We don’t have any way of assessing security measures they may have.”

As of Thursday, Steve Wolf, CEO at Ultrinsic, said he had not received any communication from the administration at IU.

“It would be our pleasure to meet with administrators at Indiana University to explain how Ultrinsic works and can further benefit Indiana University,” Wolf wrote in an e-mail. “We believe that if they take the time to understand the value that Ultrinsic brings to the educational process, they will embrace our service.“