E-mail Policies

Grambling State jumped from frying pan over an e-mail that hinted students could not use their university-issued accounts for political advocacy into the fire over a staff and employee guidelines. The gist is the student policy was a false rumor, but the FOI-fest which ensued turned up the staff policy. Subscribers can read from The Chron here.

"shall not be used for the creation or distribution of any disruptive or offensive messages, including offensive comments about race, gender, hair color, disabilities, age, sexual orientation, pornography, religious beliefs and practice, political beliefs, or national origin."

On the surface, this looks like a pretty standard block of text used in the late 1990s to enforce campus speech standards. My initial guess is no one had looked at this in years, and did not know the language was there.

Having watched some political festivities from extremely close range here and having lived and worked in the Louisiana higher ed system where the laws address Long-era abuses of public employees, where this started seems legit. You must be careful in political seasons as a public employee.

It did prompt me to take a quick look at the UA email policy for reference. You might double check yours, and any confidential information or proprietary information policies your school or athletic department might maintain.