Email Procedures


College email accounts serve as an official means of electronic communication. Use of College email accounts is limited to educational purposes and legitimate business of the College. Users must abide by all College policies and procedures and federal, state, and local laws. Users must be aware of the legal risks of using email. If any user sends or forwards emails with libelous, defamatory, offensive, discriminatory, or obscene remarks, the user can be held responsible.

Email is intended for communication between individuals and clearly designated groups of individuals and should not be used for mass broadcasting or the wide distribution of large attachments. Only authorized users may send email to all faculty and staff. General announcements intended for the College community should be posted on Communication Central. Requests for use of the email system for marketing to prospective or current students must have prior approval by the Chief Technology Officer and Director of Marketing.

The College may send official correspondence to members of its community via email. Students, faculty, and staff are expected to check their College email account regularly. College employees are expected to use their College email account for all College-related communications.

 

 

User Responsibilities

  • Use electronic mail in a responsible manner consistent with other business communications (e.g., phone, correspondence).
  • Safeguard the integrity, accuracy and confidentiality of College electronic mail.
  • Only use mail accounts assigned to them.
  • Remove mail from their mailbox consistent with College, departmental or electronic mail administrator message retention policies and standards. 

Unacceptable User Behavior

  • Sending any unsolicited mail or materials that are of a fraudulent, pornographic, defamatory, harassing or threatening nature.
  • Posting materials that violate existing laws or College codes of conduct, are inconsistent with the College mission, or are commercial advertisements or announcements on any electronic bulletin boards.
  • Forwarding any other form of unnecessary mass mailing (such as chain letters) to College or external electronic mail users.
  • Using electronic mail access to unlawfully solicit or exchange copies of copyrighted software.

Security and Confidentiality Standards

  • The College considers an electronic mail message as a personal or business correspondence; therefore, it should be dealt with in the same manner.
  • The College considers electronic mail messages the property of the sender and/or receiver. Although the messages are considered the property of the sender and/or receiver, these messages are stored on College computer systems, and the College is therefore responsible for the administration of electronic mail.
  • The right to privacy is not inherent on an electronic mail system, especially one connected to the Internet.
  • The College will not monitor the content of electronic documents or messages; however, the privacy of documents and messages stored in electronic media cannot be guaranteed. Electronic documents and messages may be readable to maintenance, security and troubleshooting staff while performing their job functions. Such access occurs only when a problem in the software or network arises. Additionally, electronic mail may pass out of one computer environment, across a network, and into another totally different computer environment even within the College system. The level of security over your message is affected each time the computer hardware, software and environment change. Untraceable leaks may occur.
  • If there is a College investigation for alleged misconduct, the President or their designee may authorize that electronic mail or files be locked or copied to prevent destruction and loss of information. Additionally, the College may monitor the content of electronic documents and messages, or access electronic mail backups or archives as a result of legal discovery, writ, warrant, subpoena, or when there is a threat to the computer systems integrity or security.
  • The confidentiality of the contents of electronic mail messages that include certain types of information (e.g., student related, medical, personal) may be protected by FERPA and/or the Electronic Communications Privacy Act of 1986.
  • The authenticity of an electronic mail message cannot be assured due to the state of present electronic mail technology. This means that the authorship or source of an electronic mail message may not be as indicated in the message.

Use Standards

  • Individuals are prohibited from using an electronic mail account assigned to another individual to either send or receive messages. If it is necessary to read another individual’s mail (e.g., while they are on vacation, on leave, etc.), message forwarding should be requested from the electronic mail administrator.
  • College electronic mail users are encouraged to use these communications resources to share knowledge and information in furtherance of the College’s missions of instruction, research and public service. Occasional and incidental social communications using electronic mail are not prohibited; however, such messages should be limited and not interfere with an employee’s job function.
  • Individuals with email ids on College computer systems are prohibited from sending messages which violate existing laws or College codes of conduct or policies; are inconsistent with the College mission; or are advertisements or announcements for a commercial business.
  • Authorized users should not “rebroadcast” information about significant issues obtained from another individual in respect to that individuals’ reasonable expectation of confidentiality.
  • Authorized users are prohibited from sending, posting or publicly displaying or printing unsolicited mail or materials that is of a fraudulent, defamatory, harassing, abusive, obscene or threatening nature on any College system. The sending of such messages/materials will be handled according to current College codes of conduct, policies and procedures.
  • The College accepts no responsibility for the content of electronic mail received. If a student receives electronic mail that they consider harassing, threatening or offensive, they should contact the Center for Student Engagement for assistance.
  • Users should remember federal and state laws and College policies against racism, sexism and sexual harassment exist. Additionally, the College has special concern for incidents in which individuals are subject to harassment or threat because of membership in a particular racial, religious, gender or sexual orientation group.

All users must acknowledge that they have read and agreed to the complete Technology Use Policy and Procedures to access services and systems on the FCC network.