General Web Policies

The following policies apply to both official and personal Web pages unless explicitly stated otherwise within the policy.


A. The Kalamazoo College World Wide Web Site is an official publication of Kalamazoo College. All text and graphics included on the official pages are copyrighted and should not be reproduced without written permission from an appropriate College official unless it is saved in an area explicitly made available for common use, such as a common images repository.

B. The purpose of the Kalamazoo College World Wide Web Site is to further the mission of the College by providing information to many constituents electronically. It plays an important role in maintaining the strong reputation the College enjoys. Therefore, the content and structure of official pages must adhere to College guidelines and standards.

C. Content of all pages on the Kalamazoo College World Wide Web Site must reflect the goals of Kalamazoo College; must comply with the Honor System; must conform to federal and state laws, licenses, contracts, and copyrights, and the policies of Kalamazoo College; must adhere to College standards; and may not be used for commercial purposes.

D. Materials that are owned by others may not be published on Official Web Pages without the expressed permission of the owner. Assume that materials published on the Web by others are protected by copyright unless a disclaimer or waiver is expressly stated. Computer software and electronic transmissions of text or imagery are protected under the Copyright Act of 1976. Common violations of this policy include unauthorized use of such things as trademarked images of cartoon characters as well as photographs, artwork, text and data that have been created or owned by others.

E. An Official Web Pages & Information Provider Agreement form must be signed to obtain an Official Web Page for a department, committee, organization or auxiliary program. If the registered Information Provider should change, a newly designated person from said group must complete and submit a new form.

F. Kalamazoo College reserves the right to unlink, without prior notice to the author, any page that does not conform to the accepted policies and guidelines.

G. Violation of Web Site policies may result in revocation of Kalamazoo College World Wide Web Site publishing privileges and disciplinary action by Kalamazoo College or other legal action.

H. Administration of these policies is the responsibility of the Dean of Libraries and Information Services.

I. If a page has been temporarily suspended for a violation of policies, the author may appeal that decision to the Dean of Libraries and Information Services who then refers appeals to the President.

J. Web sites maintained on non-central systems, such as a departmental or student-run server, will be held to the policies and guidelines set forth for centrally based Web sites. Whether the site is considered “official” or “personal” will depend on the nature of the site. The College has the authority to shut down such a site if it violates the pertinent policies and guidelines.

K. All information stored on the central academic systems at Kalamazoo College is considered private unless purposely made available to the public by the owner. Information Services staff will access a private file (including email), programs, passwords, accounting information, printouts, tapes or other computing media without the owner’s consent only in cases of suspected system security breaches or
policy violations, or upon written authorization of the Dean of Libraries and Information Services. A request for help in solving a system problem is implicit consent to view files which may be related to the problem. Users should be aware that data on the central academic systems are backed up onto tape.