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Electronic Communication

E-Mail:

The Trinity e-mail system is an official means of communication. The University views communication via e-mail to constitute being duly informed for faculty, staff and students. Reading e-mail and checking one's e-mail is thus an obligation for all faculty, staff and students. Having one's university e-mail forwarded to an off-campus account does not alter this obligation. The Trinity University e-mail system is a delivery system for communication and does not constitute a long term storage system for documents delivered by e-mail. While the system is backed up each 24 hours, back-up tapes are only retained for 72 hours. Backup tapes do not constitute archival storage, and are not searchable. They are used to restore mailboxes in the event of system "crashes". The University does provide archival storage of e-mail for two weeks. E-mail more than two weeks old will be deleted from the archives. Thus, the e-mail system ought not to be relied upon for the long-term retention of official records of the university. The University provides storage systems outside of the e-mail system for such longer term retention . Storing such records may alternatively be accomplished by saving them to a CD, DVD, flash drive or printing them.

Voice Mail:

As with e-mail, voice mail records are retained for two weeks. The VoIP telephone system cannot serve as a long term storage system for important voice mail communications. The retention of voice mail for the longer term may be accomplished by utilizing the university network storage system or copying such files to CD, DVD or flash drive.

Documents:

Documents created by any user for which one needs reliable storage should utilize the University network based storage system and not rely solely on a copy stored on a local hard drive. Alternatively, such documents may be printed and stored.

Privacy:

Trinity operates the e-mail system with full respect for privacy and confidentiality in accordance with relevant laws, regulations and university policy. While Trinity permits limited personal use of the e-mail infrastructure, those availing themselves of such privilege are subject to the same rules, regulations laws and policies as university business e-mail. The custodians of the e-mail system must not inappropriately access or disclose the content of mail on the University e-mail system unless required by law to disclose such contents or in certain circumstances only with the permission of the university President. For example: When the correspondent is unavailable and the information is necessary for the conduct of university business or in a health or safety emergency.

E-Mail Accounts:

Graduates of Trinity will have their e-mail accounts disabled following one year post graduation. Individuals resigning from Trinity staff will not have access to their University provided e-mail account effective on the date of resignation. Trinity faculty designated "professor emeritus" will be provided a Trinity e-mail account for life unless that account is abused in violation of University policies or if dormant and unused for more than one year. Log Retention: DHCP and IP logs are retained for one week.

Definitions:

DHCP - Dynamic Host Configuration Protocol - Used by network devices to obtain the parameters required for operation in an Internet Protocol network IP Address - Internet Protocol - The address of the client on the Internet. Essentially identifies the client making any given connection to a site. Every computer connected to the Internet has an IP address which enables the identification of that computer.


 
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