Academic Computing Policy Board

Meeting Minutes
September 29, 2008

Members Present:  Clare Mather, Roberta Lembke, Brian Bjorklund (chair), Olaf Hall-Holt

The second meeting of the academic year focused on the new Higher Education Opportunity Act (HEOA).  First, some clarifications:  there will be six regional meetings across the country to help shape the implementation of the regulations.  The proposed timeline is for the regulations to begin to take effect on July 1, 2010, at the earliest. 

Student attitudes toward regulation of peer-to-peer file-sharing vary greatly.   When the RIAA sends a warning letter to the College, the letter contains an IP address, and the student who owns the relevant machine has a conversation with the Dean of Students.  In some cases the student did not understand what was happening and is horrified to find out that their machine has been used for illegal file-sharing.  In other cases the student has clearly been promoting this activity, and argues that it is their right to do so.

The current penalty for this activity is to prevent IP access for that machine for some time period.  A stiffer penalty, namely of preventing all network access for the student, is not compatible with normal participation in many courses on campus.  The ACPB has been asked to formulate a policy on appropriate consequences, not only for the first offense, but for subsequent offenses as well.

In formulating this policy, we would like to hear from Associate Dean Pierce, both in terms of his thoughts on the matter and how to approach the student body with this issue.  Some College policies owe their effectiveness in part to student involvement in the policy formation (the Honor Code) while others do not (the alcohol policy).

Roberta Lembke met brief with the SGA president last week, and he is going to set up a liaison to IIT that can meet with us.  If we seek to build consensus on this issue, we can begin by informing others about the new laws, and we have some time to try to find agreement about how to respond to the three requirements of informing the community, developing a plan to encourage compliance, and considering alternative legal sources.

Brief discussion on topics for future meetings and communicating with the whole faculty.
Submitted by Olaf Hall-Holt