ACADEMIC SENATE
Procedure:
1. A motion should be typed or
hand-printed.
2. A motion should first be offered to
the Executive Board for review and advice on editing and parliamentary
implications.
3. If changes are necessary, the
motion should be recopied on another form.
Amendments may be indicated in the margin or on the reverse of this
form.
Whereas the
information transmission, filing, search, and retrieval functions provided by
the University’s email system have made it possible for faculty and staff
members to organize, execute, and track activities they would not otherwise
attempt;
Whereas for many
faculty members, the email facility provided by the ISD central servers has
become the equivalent of an electronic desk, and the dominant method of
disseminating working information, interacting with research colleagues,
communicating interim research results, managing research projects, supervising
research assistants, and communicating with students and teaching assistants;
Whereas many research
project records involving commitments to sponsors and/or other faculty and
graduate student investigators may exist only in the form of faculty email
messages, and such research projects may span multiple years;
Whereas ISD reports
that email demand for central server space has grown much more quickly than
they expected, and ISD is concerned that demand will grow to the point that it
will be a technical challenge to manage a sufficient supply of central server
space;
Whereas various draft
email policies circulated in the Spring of 2003 focus on restricting to 180
days the length of time that the University is willing to store email files on
the University’s central servers;
Whereas some faculty members’
records would be permanently and irretrievably lost if automatically deleted,
and the scholarly activities these faculty members would otherwise undertake if
they had access to this information would not occur;
Whereas principal
investigators pursuing funded research have a duty to communicate with research
sponsors on behalf of the University, and the involuntary deletion of relevant
emails messages could easily cause the University to fail to meet its
contractual obligations to research sponsors;
Whereas encouraging
faculty members to store email files locally rather than centrally may greatly
amplify the burden associated with meeting legal demands related to discovery
or responding to subpoenas, particularly if the University’s policies are obviously
designed to disburse email messages away from the central servers;
Whereas faculty
members should not be expected to bear the expense and distraction of
duplicating existing information management systems to ensure access to records
the faculty needs to perform its work on the University’s behalf;
BE IT RESOLVED
that the University should manage demand for central server space by means
other than involuntary deletion of faculty email files. The email records that faculty and staff
members deem relevant to ongoing work activities, or potentially relevant to
future activities, should not be arbitrarily deleted from the central
servers. Decisions about which email
messages are relevant enough to be temporarily retained on the central servers
should be left to individual investigators and support staff.
Resolution Number:
02/03-12 Motion
by: Eng’g. Faculty Council
Date: April 3, 2003 Seconded by:
To be presented at
Senate meeting held: May 7, 2003
Action taken: declined with two votes, 11 against, and one
abstention