Spring Break
District policy challenges morale, senators say
By Joyce Flores
Issue date: 2/23/07 Section: News
Originally published: 2/22/07 at 5:23 PM CSTLast update: 2/26/07 at 10:17 AM CST
Faculty Senate met Wednesday in a special session with the district director of human resources, Celso Guzman.
Dr. Terry Walch asked questions that had been submitted by faculty.
The topics ranged from a compensation study being conducted by human resources to the recent reminder of district policy restricting use of district equipment and resources.
In December, the district sent e-mails and notified all district employees that personal use of district computers would not be tolerated.
The main topic of discussion was what prompted the policy and how it would be enforced.
"Employees were receiving personal e-mails, packages from Fedex and UPS to their offices or in mailrooms," Guzman said.
Guzman explained that the district has a responsibility to taxpayers and it would not be right to let employees use district property to run their personal business. He also said that random monitoring of computer hard drives might be a way to enforce the policy.
"There has been some discussion about random monitoring of usage. Nobody has said that it's going to happen," Guzman said. "It's not something new; nonacademic institutions do this."
But Guzman did explain that there might be a problem when it came to differentiating research from personal use.
"If the faculty is doing research on the sexual practices of carpentry ants - very valid research - how are we going to deal with that? We need to define what applies to staff and identify faculty use."
A concern brought on by the possible monitoring was who will be doing the actual monitoring.
Jeff Hunt, theater and speech communications chair, said that this brought up the past ethical challenges that have come from the district level. "Who would be doing the watching?" Hunt said. "People shouldn't be running a business in the computer in their office, but when I hear random monitoring, who are the people doing this? Is anyone watching them?"
Guzman assured the senate that there is no plan, as of yet, to do any random monitoring.
Dr. Terry Walch asked questions that had been submitted by faculty.
The topics ranged from a compensation study being conducted by human resources to the recent reminder of district policy restricting use of district equipment and resources.
In December, the district sent e-mails and notified all district employees that personal use of district computers would not be tolerated.
The main topic of discussion was what prompted the policy and how it would be enforced.
"Employees were receiving personal e-mails, packages from Fedex and UPS to their offices or in mailrooms," Guzman said.
Guzman explained that the district has a responsibility to taxpayers and it would not be right to let employees use district property to run their personal business. He also said that random monitoring of computer hard drives might be a way to enforce the policy.
"There has been some discussion about random monitoring of usage. Nobody has said that it's going to happen," Guzman said. "It's not something new; nonacademic institutions do this."
But Guzman did explain that there might be a problem when it came to differentiating research from personal use.
"If the faculty is doing research on the sexual practices of carpentry ants - very valid research - how are we going to deal with that? We need to define what applies to staff and identify faculty use."
A concern brought on by the possible monitoring was who will be doing the actual monitoring.
Jeff Hunt, theater and speech communications chair, said that this brought up the past ethical challenges that have come from the district level. "Who would be doing the watching?" Hunt said. "People shouldn't be running a business in the computer in their office, but when I hear random monitoring, who are the people doing this? Is anyone watching them?"
Guzman assured the senate that there is no plan, as of yet, to do any random monitoring.
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