Acceptable Use Policy

5.0 Personal Pages
Primary audience: Faculty, Staff, Students, Unit Heads
Last modified or reviewed: August 2000

5.1 Policy Statement

Personal pages may be created by faculty, staff, and students and may contain personal information that features the interests, activities, and opinions of their creators. It must be clear, though, that the views and opinions expressed in personal pages are the sole responsibility of the page authors. East Tennessee State University does not accept responsibility for the contents of personal Web pages. Further, personal pages must not state or imply that ETSU has reviewed or approved the pages. Personal page authors must not give the impression that they are representing or making statements on behalf of ETSU or any unit of the university. Personal pages may not be registered with ETSU's Web Page Registry or linked to the top tier of the ETSU site.

A personal page may be either linked or freestanding. The head of a unit must approve the link from the unit's Web page to any personal page. Personal pages linked to unit pages must comply with any unit policies and requirements as well as university policies and procedures. Unit heads are responsible for ensuring that personal pages linked from their unit page comply with university policies and all relevant federal, state, and local statutes. Unit heads are responsible for removing links to personal pages found to be in violation of policies and statutes.

5.2 Why follow this policy?

Personal pages that do not comply with this policy may be removed from the ETSU Web site. Page authors who refuse to bring their pages into compliance may be prohibited from using computing resources to publish Web pages and may be liable for reimbursing ETSU for any costs associated with enforcing this policy.

5.3 Related Issues

If a personal page receives an unreasonable amount of traffic, such that the performance of the ETSU Web site as a whole is degraded, the page author may be asked to change the content of the page.

There are some programs that may make a page(s) act as a server. This kind of activity can severely affect the performance of the ETSU network. Since the ETSU network, servers, Web and desktop computers are intended for educational purposes, desktop computers should not be used as servers. Further, such use could overload ETSU systems and compromise network security.