DCU students will face disciplinary proceedings if they send any offensive emails from their DCU email accounts.
DCU staff members have growing concerns about the problem; some female staff members have been sent sexually offensive emails from students and have reported them.
DCU Dean of Teaching and Learning and Deputy Registrar, Billy Kelly said: “Last week a number of students have been reported for sending inappropriate or offensive emails to staff members or to class lists from their own student email accounts.”
He continued, “The issue here is that ultimately each user of a DCU email account is responsible for the use of that account. I’m guessing in a lot of these cases people have just got up and walked away, leaving their email account open.”
“It’s a problem, something one individual may laugh about and find funny, another may not.”
In the past week one student was called in for disciplinary meetings. The student in question sent an abusive email from his DCU account to a staff member but said the email in question was sent by someone else.
Mr. Kelly called it a “disciplinary issue” and reaffirmed the computer usage policy laid down by DCU for all students.
The Dean of Teaching and Learning also offered some advice for students who post on Facebook pages like “spotted in DCU”.
He said: “Students aren’t smart enough to realise that putting their own names to these things might not be something they would want to be associated with after college.”
He said the “DCU community” have to realise that this is not acceptable.
“It’s a disciplinary offence to impersonate someone else but also it is the responsibility of the account holder to monitor the account content. We take a very serious stance on the issue.”
Gill Fitzsimons
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