The primary purpose of the computing facilities at NCC is to provide a computing environment that enhances and supports academic, administrative, and curricular activities and allows for research by students and staff. The establishment and maintenance of a creative and open computing environment imposes responsibilities on each user to ensure that his/her activities do not interfere with the free and open access to resources by other authorized users or impinge upon other's rights to privacy and security.
It is the intent of the College to provide, within reason, adequate computing facilities for all legitimate users. To the extent that such facilities become strained, priority will be given to those engaged in work for scheduled college classes. The College reserves the right to restrict, limit, or extend computing privileges.
The following policies regulate the student use of the computing facilities:
1. Users may use only their own accounts. Users may not share passwords, allow others to use their accounts, or interfere with other users' accounts. Users may not attempt to disguise the identity of the account or machine they are using.
2. Computer facilities and equipment may be used only for College-related activities and not for personal or recreational uses. Use of computing and network resources is a privilege and not a right. As with all privileges, abuses will not be tolerated.
3. Users may not use the computing facilities network resources to gain or attempt to gain unauthorized access to local or remote computers.
4. Abusive, improper, or careless use of hardware or software is not permitted. Users must not deliberately perform an activity that interferes with the operation of hardware, software, peripherals, or networks. This interference includes but is not limited to, tampering with components of a local area network (LAN) or interfering with the operational readiness of a computer and/or the College's networks.
5. Any use or modification of another user's program or data as one's own is plagiarism and is covered by the College plagiarism policy.
6. Any appropriate license must be held for each copy of copyrighted software being used and users must abide by all the terms of the software licensing agreement. Copyrighted software may not be copied. Copying copyrighted software is subject to civil and criminal penalties and College disciplinary action.
7. Shareware and public domain software may be used as follows:
a. Other than specifically authorized shareware and public domain software, no College software may be copied.
b. Shareware and public domain software may not be copied to the network.
c. Approval must be obtained from the academic computing coordinator to copy shareware and public domain software to college owned hard drives in the academic computing facilities.
8. Users may not attempt to circumvent data protection schemes or security measures.
9. Users must not deliberately perform acts which are wasteful of computing and network resources or which monopolize these resources to the exclusion of others.
10. Users must not attempt to monitor another user's communications, nor may users read, copy, change or delete another user's files or software without permission of the owner.
11. Information or software cannot be placed on the College owned computer systems that infringes upon the rights of another person or contains information that may injure someone else and/or lead to a lawsuit or criminal charges. Examples include pirated software, libelous statements, destructive software, or software, which contains viruses.
12. The College reserves the right to eliminate dated files from the network without prior notice to users.
13. Student accounts for the network access to course required applications will be created, maintained and deleted for students enrolled in selected courses on a semester by semester basis.
14. Software may not be installed on any hard drive in the academic computing facilities without permission of the academic computing coordinator.
Failure to abide by any of the above rules (except item 5, which is covered by existing policy) shall be reported in writing to the Dean of Students for investigation and possible disciplinary action as outlined in the Student Code of Conduct. Offenders may also be subject to civil penalties and or criminal prosecution under federal or state law.
In the event of suspected abuse of computer privileges or if the security of the computer system is threatened, user accounts may be deactivated. Accounts may be examined under the direction of the Dean of Instructional Services if subsequent investigation indicates substantial abuse of the system or a serious threat is posed to the integrity of the computer or administrative systems.
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