A modern twist on stalking
Stalking isn’t funny; it’s serious and frightening. And this University of Central Florida professor who stalked a PhD student sounds remarkably obsessive about it:
Ali Borji, a 39-year-old assistant professor in the school’s Department of Computer Science, was arrested at his on-campus office Thursday night. He faces two charges of stalking — both misdemeanors.
The victim met Borji last June while she was working on her Ph.D. She told police that Borji reached out to her on Facebook to help with her studies. They went on a few dates before the victim told him that their relationship needed to remain professional, authorities said.
That’s when the trouble began. It ended with Borji’s arrest on two misdemeanor stalking charges and his dismissal from his position at the university.
Note that Borji is an assistant professor of computer science. Two of the facts about his stalking that caught my eye are related to that. The first is that he apparently sent his lady love about 800 texts a day. My guess is that he may have used his computer skills to set up a program to do that automatically rather than manually. After all, if he’s awake 16 hours a day, that would be almost one a minute for every waking hour.
Borji also informed her: “Be happy that somebody likes you this much to stalk you,” which is quite a bit of spin, not to mention chutzpah. But his most creative and really creepy taunt was this one:
He told her that he could create an artificial-intelligence facsimile of her and “do anything he wanted,” according to a police report.
Victims should be told how to document this behavior (or forward emails to a police computer). Stalkers should be confined for a significant time to a mental hospital.
Mr Borji is fortunate in that he wasn’t stalking my daughter.
IT types include a lot of dysfunctional creeps, I have seen it time and again over my career. We recently had a system administrator who was found hiding under a programmer’s desk. Asked why he was there, he said it was in case the fellow needed to be taken out, with comments about how someone has been poking the bear, and the bear knows it. He was also stalking a female sysadmin, and mentioned to her that he could kill multiple people with his bare hands before anyone could intervene, but that he also had weapons.
Didn’t take long for the state police to escort him off the property, the judge to issue a restraining order regarding the young lady, and a thorough scrub of root systems, lock changes, and three hundred people having to immediately change their passwords and log-ins as all previous were disabled. The armed guards left the premises after a week or so, so far so good.
Dude is lucky to still be alive. Apparently, he didn’t stalk a conservative girl.
The dudes are incels — who don’t want to be so.
Their social graces don’t hardly exist.
They should’ve received therapy long before.
Hmm, as it sounds like he might fit in with both of the Clintons; maybe Bill could get him a new job helping Hillary with her computer problems?
Then he could talk shop with both of them.
No Rollerball, he doesn’t deserve death. What he deserves is many broken bones and many days in a hospital followed by months and months of physical therapy. Some actions require serious consequences as a cure. But in this case, not death.
Natural stupidity, combined with artificial intelligence.
At the risk of being anti-tech, IT is a depersonalizing environment that lends itself to being sanctuary for the bizarros. Who have always been with us, but in former times were dealt with pointedly and often privately. We have surrendered that to the bleeding hearts. Now he faces misdemeanor (!) charges and will have a Muslim “chaplain” if he spends any time in the slammer.
parker: there is no need for PT or hospital care in this case; the multiple justly broken bones should not be treated. Render unto Islam that which is Islam’s.
Wouldn’t one like to think that a student is a more likely stalker than a Prof.?
There was once a Prof. I knew slightly in a different dept., separated by one floor in the building. He was a pleasant, helpful British fellow; but some time went by and I hadn’t seen him around. Someone told me, “Didn’t you know? He murdered his wife.” Gads!
IT may attract the bizarros, but pretty much every other department, especially management, attracts sociopaths. I’ll take the bizarros and day.
At the risk of being anti-tech, IT is a depersonalizing environment that lends itself to being sanctuary for the bizarros.
Cicero: Nah. Only the bright ones…
I haven’t done any research, but I doubt tech attracts dangerous people anymore than other departments, in line with ConceptJunkie’s comment.
What tech does get is people, mostly guys yeah, with social skills rather short of a full ratchet set.
At one company I worked with a young guy/gifted programmer who started handing out $100 bills to pretty women as they left work. HR had a talk with him.
He was a decent, friendly kid, even good-looking in his elfin way. He just hadn’t a clue on how to chat up the opposite sex.
Some years later I met him with a girlfriend and he was doing fine.
This Ali Borji fellow is a different animal.