Frank Conversation about Faculty
Issues
Topic: Is Academic Speech Free?
Friday, February 7th,
9:30-10:30 AM, Osprey Commons Faculty Lounge (Building 16, 4th Floor)
The United States of America provides and supports free speech among
its citizens. College campuses are known for the free exchange of ideas. One
would imagine that college campuses in the United States would be places where
free speech would be encouraged, even celebrated. Recent cases across the
country (see Chronicle Article), including incidents in Florida, however, have identified
boundaries of free speech on college campuses. The immediacy of social media has
amplified the challenges of unfettered free speech on college campuses leading
to national dialogues and some embarrassment for university administrators and
leaders. To address these concerns many college campuses are passing new
policies to address communication online. The University of North Florida
recently revised an existing policy on online communication to more fully
address both official and unofficial online communication.
With new technologies, faculty are considering how their communications online
might be affected, including statements and posts that up until recently have
been imagined as personal.
Come discuss how these issues impact UNF and faculty in Florida.
We will meet in the Faculty Lounge on the 4th floor of
the Osprey Commons.
OFE will provide the coffee and pastries.
Our discussion focused on the word "at" in the policy on online communications. According to UNF officials, any communication using UNF resources, including being logged onto the UNF network, would fall under the policy. Therefore, personal blog posts or facebook updates or twitter posts that are done on your personal account but are posted using the UNF network would be subject to the "Unofficial Online Communication" policy.
ReplyDeleteThere were two questions asked in the session.
ReplyDeleteFirst, is there anyone at UNF whose responsibility it is to monitor posting on social media sites. The answer is "no." Staff in the Marketing and Publications office do Google searches routinely to see what is being said about UNF. A post might end up in this Google search. UNF faculty, staff, students, and the broader community, however, do send notices to our Marketing and Publications staff when they read things, positive or negative about UNF, on social media sites or other sites. Once you press send, or post, consider this information available to UNF staff.
Second, there was a question about UNF faculty and staff identifying themselves as such on personal blogs. As far as I can tell, this would not fall under the "Unofficial Online Communication" policy, but using the UNF brand or logo might fall into different policies about logo use on pages not affiliated with UNF.
If you have more questions, post them here or email me at drichard@unf.edu.