COEIT Policy on Computer Abuse

According to the Student Guidelines for Responsible Computing and the Student Code of Conduct, students are expected to obey all applicable laws regarding copyright and other intellectual property. Students may not use university resources for purposes including but not limited to:

the electronic distribution or transmission either of copyrighted material for which the student is not a copyright holder or of other electronic data that is not directly related to the student's academic work;

or making available such electronic data for electronic distribution transmission, or re-transmission.

The purpose of this document is to outline the procedure in effect in the College of Engineering and Information Technology should violations of this policy and/or of applicable laws be alleged.

The appropriate administrators (departmental and college) for the computing system(s) on which the violations are alleged to have occurred will be notified. Accounts used for alleged violations will be suspended. Applicable evidence will be collected. Students will be notified by U. S. mail that they are to schedule an appointment with their department chair at their earliest possible convenience to resolve the question of potential abuse. Departmental and college IT administrators may be asked to attend this meeting if necessary.

At the scheduled meeting the student will be presented with a description of the alleged violation of the Guidelines.

The possible disciplinary actions are as follows.

1. At the option of the College, certain first offenses may warrant a limited disciplinary action. In this case, if the student admits in writing the violation, a letter of reprimand will be placed in the student's file in the office of Student Judicial Affairs and the incident will be placed in the University's database of violations of the Guidelines. In this event, the student's user accounts may be reinstated if no further action is warranted and after any files contributing to the offense have been deleted.
2. If this is not a first offense, or if the offense does not warrant a limited disciplinary action, or if the student contests the allegation, then the details will be presented to the Office of Student Judicial Affairs for adjudication. In this case the student's user account(s) may remain disabled until the matter is resolved.
3. Neither options (1) or (2) preclude referring the matter to the appropriate law enforcement agencies.

Under option (1), students who admit to violations of the Guidelines, and under option (2), students who are found to have violated the Guidelines, will have been deprived of access to their user accounts for some period of time. The University and the College are not responsible for the concomitant negative effect this is likely to have on the student's academic work.