Computer Usage Policy

All computer and network facilities at The University of Texas at Brownsville and Texas Southmost College are provided for the use of students, faculty, and staff in support of the programs and mission of the University and College. All students, faculty and staff are responsible for seeing that these facilities are used in an effective, efficient, ethical and lawful manner. The following policies are documented to help clarify this use:

1. Computer facilities and accounts are owned by the University and College. All access to the computer systems must have the appropriate authorization.

2. Computer equipment and accounts are to be used only for the purpose for which they are assigned and are not to be used for commercial purposes.

3. An account assigned to an individual must not be used by others. The individual account owner is responsible for the proper use of the account, including proper password protection.

4. Programs and files are to be treated as confidential unless they have explicitly been made available to other authorized individuals. Users should not modify or delete files, or obtain copies of tapes, passwords, or any type of data or programs belonging to other users unless specifically authorized by the owner to do so. This includes copyrighted material.

5. Electronic communication facilities (such as E-Mail, INTERNET, and BULLETIN BOARDS) should only be used for University or College business.

6. Users may not collect or discard output other than their own without the owner's permission. The use of printers for other than University or College-related materials is prohibited. Users are expected to be efficient in their use of printed output and disk storage.

7. Users must respect system integrity and resources by not developing or executing programs that could harass other users, degrade performance, or damage software or hardware components. Users should also share resources in an equitable manner and respect technical assistants and consultants.

8. The University and College will not assume responsibility for any personal software or computer used at the University or College for any purpose.

9. Game playing for other than instructional or learning purposes is prohibited.

10. Each authorized user of computing resources must read and sign the Information Security Statement.

An individual's computer use privilege may be suspended immediately upon the discovery of a possible violation of any of these policies. Any suspected violation may be confidentially reported to the appropriate faculty, supervisor, department chair, Information Systems staff, or Vice President