Xref: utzoo alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk:65 comp.admin.policy:282 Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!thunder.mcrcim.mcgill.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!spool.mu.edu!think.com!zaphod.mps.ohio-state.edu!cis.ohio-state.edu!tut.cis.ohio-state.edu!elephant.cis.ohio-state.edu!weide From: weide@elephant.cis.ohio-state.edu (Bruce Weide) Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk,comp.admin.policy Subject: Re: Ohio State University CIS Policies Message-ID: <130736@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu> Date: 5 Jun 91 20:02:50 GMT References: <1991Jun3.173550.13928@eff.org> <1991Jun3.232500.24850@ms.uky.edu> <1991Jun4.004016.20415@eff.org> Sender: news@tut.cis.ohio-state.edu Followup-To: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk Organization: The Ohio State University, Department of Computer and Information Science Lines: 95 Today someone pointed me to this newsgroup because I was chair of the Ohio State University CIS Department Computer Committee in 1984, when the usage policies that were recently posted to this newsgroup were adopted. After having read the follow-ups to the original posting, I thought I should make a few remarks. To summarize: (1) Only one person affiliated with OSU (one of our system staff in message #61) seems to have contributed to the discussion. Apparently no one else -- including the poster of the original message -- is in any way associated with OSU, has any first-hand knowledge of how the policies are administered, or knows whether they have been workable. (2) Most of the discussion actually has had little to do with OSU policies. There has been considerable dialogue about a problem a student had at Maryland -- all under the heading "Ohio State University CIS Policies." ---- (1) In article <1991Jun4.004016.20415@eff.org> kadie@eff.org (Carl Kadie) writes: > >At most places and in most cases no formal hearing is necessary. As >you point out, an informal face-to-face conversation is usually >sufficent. The *right* to a formal hearing, however, is a necessary >check on the sys admin's power. Consider the situation at Ohio State. >According to a sys admin there, at least three students are being/were >punished because a sys admin thinks they are "real jerk[s]". The >students apparently have no way to appeal this judgement. >... >A student at Ohio State student tells me that users there are also >locked out (denied access to their computer account) when they are >wanted for a meeting. The difference is they are given no notice >before the lock out. As J. Greely pointed out in #61, OSU has an elaborate policy on academic misconduct that is used as the basis for pursuing serious alleged violations of the computer usage policies. The procedures are spelled out elsewhere, not in the posted policies. Indeed the policies HAVE BEEN used as the basis for academic misconduct actions. In urgent situations (e.g., break-in in progress), the staff takes immediate action to control damage, but "due process" is not therefore inherently violated, as several people have been quick to point out. As for the business of being locked out of an account "when they were wanted for a meeting," this statement is a mystery to me. First, I have no idea what it means. Furthermore, if a student felt cheated by the policy, the obvious recourse would be to talk to the current chair of the Computer Committee or the OSU CIS Department chair, not to someone at Illinois. While I was chair of the committee no one raised such a question, and I doubt the current chair has heard it either. ---- (2) Much of the discussion has centered on the experiences of a student at the University of Maryland, but the articles were still under the heading of "Ohio State University CIS Policies." A casual reader may have missed this, thinking that the problems arose at OSU from (or at least under) the posted policies. ---- A final remark: The policies are about 7 years old now, and some of them need to be changed to reflect different accounting methods, etc. For example, in 1984, CIS paid for OSU's access to national and international networks. Undergraduates were discouraged at the time from sending mail outside OSU because each message cost us real money (of which we had none to spare, and still don't). Now the situation is entirely different, with the University picking up the essentially fixed cost of Internet connection. The written policies are currently under revision to reflect these kinds of changes; the de facto policy for some time has been that anyone is free to send mail, etc. There was never any intention of "censoring" mail, just making the network connection affordable on a limited budget. Overall, I think people here would agree that having written policies to cover computer usage has served us well. I would advise institutions that have no such policies in place to consider adopting ones that make sense for the particular computing environment in question. Cheers, -Bruce ------ Prof. Bruce W. Weide Dept. of Computer and Information Science The Ohio State University 2036 Neil Ave. Mall Columbus, Ohio 43210-1277 USA Phone: 614-292-1517 E-mail: weide@cis.ohio-state.edu