VON recognizes that all Dartmouth alumni are bound not only by the Policy but also by local, state, and federal laws relating to electronic media, copyrights, privacy, and security.
Freedom of expression and an open environment within which to pursue scholarly inquiry and to share information are encouraged, supported, and protected on VON; censorship is not compatible with the goals of VON. While VON rejects censorship, behavior that constitutes misconduct will not be protected. Such behavior includes, but is not limited to, the use of VON information technology resources in connection with child pornography, harassment of any kind, copyright infringement, theft, unauthorized access, and other violations of the law.
Security/Privacy Statement
VON is an online alumni community provided by the Dartmouth Offices of Development and Alumni Relations. VON services are specifically designed to facilitate communication among alumni for personal and College-related purposes.
Dartmouth College has taken all reasonable precautions to secure the personal information available through VON services. The online Dartmouth Alumni Directory is password-protected to allow access by the Alumni Relations Office and registered College alumni only. Furthermore, the directory is located on a secure Web site that incorporates encryption technology. Although these precautions effectively protect any personal information available through the directory from abuse or outside interference, a certain degree of privacy risk is faced any time information is shared over the Internet. Therefore, through the listing management feature of the Dartmouth Alumni Directory, you have the ability to control the nature and amount of information in your directory listing that is available to other alumni.
Communications among alumni are not intended for publication or retransmission in any media. Use by alumni of the addresses or other information contained in the online directory for any public, private, commercial, or political mailing is strictly prohibited. Prohibited uses of the information in the online Dartmouth Alumni Directory include but are not limited to:
- Advertising and solicitations by alumni for commercial services;;
- Cold-calling or any kind of mass mailings by alumni (sometimes known as spamming);
- Activities that are illegal or fraudulent;
- Uses that inaccurately imply endorsement, approval, or sponsorship by Dartmouth College, the Office of Development and Alumni Relations, or their officers;
- Mailings of any kind using false identification;
- Activities that violate other alumni users' privacy, such as granting access to the system or distributing information obtained from the services to nonalumni;
- Posting of obscene materials or use of obscene or vulgar language—hate speech or harassment, or use of abusive or threatening language of any kind, will constitute a violation of these policies governing the use of VON services;
- Creation of profane, fraudulent, or obscene aliases.
The College is not responsible for screening communications/bulletin board postings and will not actively monitor the use of such services as they become available. If the College determines that a user's participation in VON online services has violated the policies set forth herein, the College reserves the right, at its sole discretion, to take appropriate actions, including but not limited to removing a posted message. The College reserves the right to deny a user further access to VON online services if such user violates these policies or any applicable laws or regulations. The College may deny access to Vox Alumni Network to any individual at any time.
Questions, issues, or complaints should be brought to the attention of the Vox Online Network online coordinator at <support@helpdesk.dartmouth.org>.
Intellectual Property
VON expects all members of the community to be aware of how intellectual property laws, regulations, and policies apply to the electronic environment and to respect the property of others. For further information, please see the Dartmouth College Copyright and Patent Policy and the Dartmouth College Sources manual.
No member of the community shall use another's content or property in a way that violates copyright law or infringes upon the rights held by others.
Members of the community should recognize that placing their work in the electronic public domain may result in widespread distribution of their work. Copyright law applies in "cyberspace", and United States law des not require that a work contain a notice of copyright in order to be protected by copyright law. You should assume that works communicated through the network are subject to copyright unless there is a specific disclaimer to the contrary.
Allocation of Resources
Members of the VON community are entitled to a fair share of information resources. No one shall attempt to degrade VON or non-Dartmouth computer systems, networks, or personal computer performance, or to deprive other users, within and without the community, of information resources or authorized access to any College-owned or individually owned computer.
Loopholes in VON computer systems and network or knowledge of a special password shall not be used to damage computer systems or networks, to obtain unauthorized resources, or to take resources from other users.
The unauthorized duplication or use of any software that is licensed or protected by copyright is theft.
Unauthorized use of VON-owned computing resources for commercial purposes is prohibited.
When necessary for the maintenance of a system or network, VON personnel may restrict the availability of shared resources.
Account Revocation Procedures
The College reserves the right, at its discretion, to deny access to any user. Reasons for denial of access include but are not limited to the following:
- Involvement in criminal activity, regardless of whether such activity is alleged or one is convicted of such activity by a court of law;
- Behavior that constitutes a violation of a Dartmouth code or policy, including this policy;
- Use of the Internet and the VON computer network and associated resources for one's own commercial gain, or for other commercial purposes not officially sanctioned by VON.
When the holder of an account dies, his or her VON email account will be discontinued and will not be accessible to anyone in the immediate family unless stated in writing by the deceased.
This Policy will be enforced and matters falling under it will be adjudicated by the director of the Office of Alumni Relations.
Appendix
The utility programs listed below collect information about the people who use them, but are not required to warn of this fact when the program is used. This list is maintained by the Vox Online Network and is reviewed annually by the Office of Alumni Relations. Any program not included on this list that collects information that could directly or indirectly identify a person using the program must warn each user that such information collection is about to occur and must give the user a chance to leave the program before data collection begins. VON cannot guarantee that programs not provided by Alumni Relations adhere to this provision.
Programs Exempted from Issuing a Privacy Warning
The Web server host (www.dartmouth.org) keeps a log of account names who have connected to the server, their connect and disconnect times.
BlitzMail server (alum.dartmouth.org) keeps a log of the names of the people who have connected to the mail server, their connect and disconnect times, information about client machine capacities, and summary information about (but not the text of) messages sent or received.
This information retained by the above systems may be accessed by VON personnel in connection with performance issues, misconduct, or illegal activity.
Alumni Email Loss, Damage, or Corruption
Messages that have been accidentally deleted or that have expired cannot be restored.
Neither Dartmouth College nor the Office of Alumni Relations shall be liable for any consequential, indirect, punitive, special or incidental losses or damages, whether foreseeable or unforeseeable, including, but not limited to, claims for defamation, errors, loss of data, or interruption in availability of data, or the use or misuse of this site or the content of any message sent by or to site users.
We highly recommend that you save important messages directly to your hard drive and not rely on your expiration date settings. This includes sent messages. To do this, open your folders view and double click the folder containing the messages to be saved. Highlight the messages (for multiple messages, hold the control key down and click on each message or the shift key to select an entire group at once), then click "file, save message" and choose the location on your hard drive and click "save". With multiple messages, it will "daisychain" messages into one text file. All headers with the dates, sender and recipients will also be retained. Attachments will not be retained and must be saved separately.
Please be sure to follow these steps in the future to prevent accidental deletions.
By using VON email, you have agreed to accept responsibility for all activities that occur under your account or password.
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