ASMSU association director found guilty of misusing resources
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On Wednesday, ASMSU Association Director Kara Spencer was found guilty by the Student-Faculty Judiciary of misusing university resources when she sent an e-mail to MSU faculty and staff in September that raised concerns about proposed changes to Welcome Week.
As punishment, Spencer will receive a formal warning that will be placed in her student file. Spencer said she plans to appeal the decision.
“Of course I was disappointed,” Spencer said. “I think it’s disappointing that there wasn’t recognition that the policy that the board was being asked to evaluate is unconstitutional.”
The e-mail, which encouraged increased communication among faculty about the proposed changes, was sent to 391 faculty members, or about 8 percent of MSU faculty and staff.
The Student-Faculty Judiciary held a hearing Dec. 2 when Spencer was accused of violating two policies of the Student Life Code and the Network Acceptance Use Policy.
Academic Technology Services representative Randall Hall said Spencer had violated student laws by sending a bulk e-mail without going through the steps required by ATS.
MSU policy on bulk e-mail states that a bulk e-mail can be sent to as many as 20 or 30 people during a two-day span without proper permission. All bulk email must receive prior approval by appropriate University offices.
“This case was a procedural matter. It was a violation of a university policy in a procedural way,” Hall said. “I think a policy or guideline with no one to interpret it isn’t really worth anything.”
In the allegations form, Hall claimed that Spencer refused to obtain the proper permission needed to send the e-mail, which violated the first policy. The second violation claimed Spencer used MSU computing resources by sending the e-mail through the MSU network. Hall also claimed Spencer broke the Network Acceptance Use Policy by sending bulk unsolicited e-mails.
Throughout this case, Spencer has been supported by the Foundation for Individual Rights in Education, or FIRE.
“MSU’s decision is in defiance of the first amendment,” FIRE Director of Legal and Public Advocacy William Creeley said. “If MSU’s decision is not overturned, it sends a chilling message to students and faculty on campus about the dangers of protesting administrative decision and about the dangers of engaging other members of the campus community.”
FIRE is not a litigation organization, but Creeley said FIRE will use all of its resources to help Spencer.
“We always hope that schools will see the light,” Creeley said. “If MSU is telling its students it can no longer write professors about an issue that affects the campus community at large, then students and faculty should ask themselves what kind of institution they are attending.”
Despite the decision, Spencer and FIRE will continue to fight with an appeal.
“(The policy) does violate states’ laws but I accept what they had to say and will go ahead and appeal it,” Spencer said.
Spencer planned to submit notification of her appeal to the Office of Judicial Affairs by this weekend.
“I think that there’s two parts to this. One is that it is part of my student record which is the basis for part of my appeal,” Spencer said. “The other part of this is what I’ve learned through this process the last couple of weeks. I do feel like… I have a responsibility to help address this policy as well.”
Commentary
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Kevin
(12/12/08 8:36pm)Report
What a slap in the face it would be to MSU if the right to communicate freely with faculty is not upheld within the university. Almost scary.
Jeff
(12/12/08 11:53pm)Report
I don’t get people and email like it is some sacred right to not be bothered. Last I checked pressing delete is not that hard.
Chris
(12/13/08 12:17am)Report
This is simply an engagement of the community. An example of free thought and free speech. You know, the things that college campuses EXIST for. I completely, 100% disagree with MSU here. This is a shame.
Katie
(12/13/08 9:37am)Report
What a horrible decision by our university. I’m glad to see they encourage us to be advocates and free thinkers, and to communicate with them. Obviously we’re not as important to them as the money they rake in per student to pay their salaries. It’s a disgrace.
Pete
(12/13/08 10:56am)Report
Soooo…what if someone, after 4 years of attending MSU, wanted to email each of their professors and TA’s? Say average of 4 classes a semester, throw in 2 TAs each semester…that’s 12 people a year, times 4 years….48 people. So, at the end of my schooling, if I wanted to send a thank-you note to every person involved in my education (heck, throw in the dean and some helpful dorm staff members), send it through my MSU account…that would be construed as SPAM by the administration??
This is beyond ridiculous. Way to blow it, MSU. I want to think about what it would take to do this…but someone should set up some form mailer that would send an email to every faculty on campus (you can find them all at the online directory!), telling them that you disagree with this decision. Possibly, use your own email address to do it.
Actually, someone should compile a list of all MSU faculty, post it as a text file, and encourage everyone to send an email to that list from their MSU account. We should use their own resource against them – and that’s what it is, a resource. The email system is there to foster communication. Sure, advertising your pill business or whatever is obviously SPAM, but sending a mass email to the faculty asking for further discussion is obviously NOT an abuse of the system.
Whomever is in charge at ATS should be fired outright and this whole thing should be dropped.
Alumni
(12/13/08 12:08pm)Report
The decision seems like the right one, but it looks like it is the policy that needs re-evaluation. You can send as many emails as you want, and the University can’t do a thing about that. The issue at the heart of this though is that they are saying that your msu.edu email account is University property, and while I am not a law expert, I have to agree. The University owns the servers, manages the back-end, and makes you agree to terms of use when you set it up. So if the charge was misusing University resources, which this official did, than the ruling was correct. If I understand their interpretation here, using your University email address to send out a bulk mailing is like using a professor’s office phone to do cold calling – and no one would argue that that is appropriate or reasonable. The ease of disengagement (“pressing delete” or hanging up in my example) holds no bearing on the policy.
It seems that the direction ASMSU should pursue here is to find out what it would take to work with ATS to re-evaluate the policy so that it is easier for their officials or other concerned students to disseminate information that is important. OR, they could (GASP) read the existing policy that they as the student government should understand, and follow the rules.
alumni2
(12/13/08 12:35pm)Report
i agree with alumni 1
Bleh
(12/13/08 2:46pm)Report
Alumni, if she had been using her MSU account to do the mailing, I would agree with your assessment. But according to the complaint, she’d actually used her private, non-MSU account to send the mail. (It was gmail, if I recall correctly.)
Pancho
(12/13/08 4:12pm)Report
The network policy is legally incorrect. As I read the bulk email policy, it defines bulk mail as spam, where in reality they are different. The legal definition of a spam message is an unsolicited message sent for commercial gain. From all reports I have read, Ms. Spencer was soliciting for information from faculty and staff, not looking for commercial gain.
Sadly, as the policy is written, she broke the rules, but I really think she would have a good case if she would take this case to a court of law and outside of the corrupt judicial procedures of a state university.
She Isnt Selling Viagra
(12/14/08 8:14pm)Report
She wasn’t selling anything. She wasn’t sending unrelevant useless information, or sending mail to people who didnt have a Direct Interest in what she was writing. She didnt have an ad for Viagra, that deserves to violate the policy.
The idea that the student government cant send a well written informational document to faculty about a major policy chage which impacts faculty without being punished by the administration is outrageous!
I think we all know if her email had been in support of taking away welcome week she’d not be in trouble.
Steve
(12/15/08 8:19pm)Report
MSU’s bureaucracy is a complete joke. Absurd.