Acceptable use policies and electronic mail: what are the frontiers?

Many colleges and universities have developed acceptable use policies (AUPs) governing the use of the Internet by their students and staff. These policies range from very general to very specific, but most are a mixture of the two. AUPs provide a fertile ground for exploring such topics as first amendment rights, ethics, and privacy issues with our students. Most faculty and students today accept e-mail as a fact of daily life. As use of the Internet and e-mail booms, colleges and universities are struggling to develop acceptable use policies (AUPs) that are broad enough to cover offences not yet conceived of but narrow enough to cover specific issues. I discuss a variety of AUPs I have examined from institutions ranging from small, private engineering schools to large research universities.