Edgecombe Community College
 Acceptable Use Guidelines for College Computing Resources

Version 2.0 (October, 2005)

Failure to follow the following acceptable use guidelines may result in the suspension or revoking of access accounts or other College disciplinary action and possible further legal actions as allowed by state and federal law.

College owned or operated computing resources are for the use of faculty, students, staff and other authorized individuals.  Please exercise responsible and ethical behavior when using these facilities.  The College does not attempt to identify all required or proscribed behavior by its users. Therefore, each individual’s judgment on appropriate conduct must be relied upon.  To assist in such judgment, the following guidelines have been developed:

1. You may not create, display, transmit or make accessible threatening, racist, sexist, obscene, offensive, annoying or harassing language and/or material, such as broadcasting unsolicited messages or sending unwanted electronic mail.
   
   
2. You may not access system for which you are not properly authorized or damage systems or information that is not yours, such as college records, or use any system for illegal activities.
   
   
3. You may not connect any devices not owned by the college to the campus network without prior authorization from the college's Director of Computer Services.
   
   
4. Computing resources and access accounts are to be used only for the purpose for which they are assigned and are not to be used for commercial purposes or non-college related activities.

5. An access account assigned to an individual must not be used by others.  Individuals are responsible for the proper use of their accounts, including proper password protection and appropriate use of Internet resources.  Allowing friends, family or co-workers to use your account is a serious violation of these guidelines.

6. All computer software is protected by the federal copyright law and most is proprietary and protected by legal licensing agreements in addition to the copyright law.  You are responsible for being aware of the licensing restrictions for the software you use on any system.

7. Do not engage in activities to damage or disrupt hardware or communication such as virus creation and propagation, installation of spyware, and overloading networks with excessive data such as video and audio files.

8. Be considerate.  Do not monopolize or misuse system resources by, for example requesting multiple copies from printers or by playing games.