3-23 Digital Communication

• Effective date of this revision: September 1, 2007
• Contact for more information: Office of Information Technology

POLICY

Central Michigan University provides its faculty, staff, and students with the means to communicate electronically with others, and it is the policy of CMU to exercise exclusive management rights to the methods and means of such communication. No faculty member, staff member, or student may develop and/or use an electronic mailing list or otherwise communicate electronically in a fashion inconsistent with the purposes and procedures that are described below in this document. These procedures articulate the audiences to which CMU students and employees may freely communicate using CMU digital communication resources and identifies ways that CMU students and employees might communicate with those audiences to which they, through this same policy, would not ordinarily have access.

This policy is designed to be a “master” policy in the sense that other offices that are charged in this policy as “owners” of specific audiences are encouraged to develop internal policies, procedures, and/or guidelines to govern communications to their audience(s). 

BACKGROUND

CMU recognizes the efficiency of employing digital communications among its students and employees. Digital communication saves time, saves money, and is often the fastest, most effective method of communication among members of the CMU community. At the same time, digital communications can easily be abused, and an email that seems useful and pertinent to one student or employee might easily appear as “spam” to another. While email from individual to individual is sometimes troublesome, the real issue emerges with regard to bulk or group communications, and it is this type of communication to which this policy specifically refers.

PROCEDURES

Part I: Opportunities for the CMU student or employee to employ digital communications 

Any faculty member, staff member, or student may develop a mailing list or otherwise communicate electronically (subject to the content restrictions imposed by CMU’s Acceptable Use Policy) with those with whom they have a supervisory, collaborative, or instructional relationship. For example, a business officer may maintain a mailing list of her/his direct reports or the employees in her/his division or department, a faculty member may maintain a mailing list of the students in each of her/his classes or a listserv list of her/his advisees, or a committee chair may develop a SharePoint site or WebEx room for the use of members of her/his committee. The CMU Help Desk (989.774.3662) is available to provide assistance with the various forms of digital communication available to CMU faculty, staff, and students. 

Part II: Special audiences and their owners 

There are some large audiences for which CMU has designated an “owner,” and other individuals and offices may only employ digital communications with these audiences with the express permission of these “owners.” These special audiences and their owners are noted in the table below. Some audience owners (those with active links in the chart below) maintain formal policies, procedures, and guidelines that outline the variety of electronic communication methods available, the process to be employed for obtaining approval, formatting instructions, and deadlines. Users can follow the links below to access these policies. In other cases, a phone call to the appropriate office should provide the needed information.

Part III: Bulk email communication

CMU maintains and uses a combination of tools, including Maestro and Listserv, to support mailings to groups within the CMU community that don’t fit conveniently into the audiences described in Parts I and II above. The use of other email distribution tools and strategies is discouraged and may result in blocked or incomplete mail distribution. The CMU Help Desk (989.774.3662) is available to provide assistance with the various forms of digital communication available to CMU faculty, staff, and students.

Central Michigan University reserves the right to make exceptions to, modify or eliminate this policy and or its content. This document supersedes all previous policies, procedures or guidelines relative to this subject.