Information Technology Advisory Committee
TO:
Information Technology Advisory Committee
[Jim Brown (Chair), Kay Clouse, Ian Dees, John Dixon, Jean Donham, Matt Johnson,
Scott Olinger, Dee Ann Rexroat, Todd White, Andy Wildenberg]
FR: Jim Brown, Chair
RE:
Minutes of meeting of 8 March, 2005
I. Brief updates
1. Purchasing status for upgrades – John reported that price estimates were being confirmed and
details clarified. Orders are going out first for one-of-a-kind item, and many are on their
way; the major workstation-type orders will go soon.
2. John reviewed the status of IT plans for the summer. Staff have submitted lists of things to
be don in individual areas, but IT isn’t yet very far in the complex task of coordinating the
multitude of things to be done, many of which have significant elements of necessary
temporal order. They’ll keep at it.
3. We had significant conversation about our response to the Graham, Leach, Bliley act with
respect to the college’s password policy and system capabilities for warning about password
expiration and changing passwords from off campus.
• ITAC agreed that the college should move to requiring strong passwords
• We agreed that we should work towards password replacement no later than every 180
days but assented to John’s recommendation that we not institute a 180-day expiration
policy at the current time. John feels that we should do this in steps, familiarizing
community members with the new password standard before making them face regular
expiration and the potential inconveniences involved.
• We agreed to roll out the new standard before the end of the academic year so that it
would be in effect when new students arrive in the fall.
• John is to circulate a draft explanation and timeline.
II. Policy on requiring college headers on student organization pages on the college’s web site.
We agreed NOT to require this on the grounds that student organization sites should reflect the
personalities and creativity of the organizations and that the heterogeneity of designs represents
the college accurately and without significant disadvantage.
III. Repair of student-owned computers
1. There are a number of problems in this area, headed by the fact that staff currently spends
time on this, to the detriment of having enough time to complete work essential to the
instructional and administrative needs of the college.
2. ITAC agreed that the college has no obligation to repair student-owned computers and that
our current policy of helpfulness has led a number of students to take advantage of IT staff,
essentially going to the head of the line in utilization of staff time.
3. Since the majority of problems are related to viruses, spyware, and other electronic vermin,
and since the college provides protection and cleansing software to students free of charge,
ITAC recommended a policy of declining any help unless students had first taken some
action on their own. ITAC recommended an area on the IT website detailing instructions in
this area and listing [without warranty] contact information of any on campus who wish to
be helpful in this area, whether for pay or not. IT would also maintain a contact list of
commercial vendors of computer repair services.
4. John requested until the April meeting to consider the matter further before putting this
policy into effect. We will revisit on April 12.
5. IT will announce to all community members this May what policy will go into effect at the
beginning of 05-06 academic year. This starting time was chosen in recognition of the
capabilities of network software being installed this summer which will assess desktop
operating system and infection protection software status on client workstations and route
log-in requests to a protected area on the network for information on requirements for
connecting to the college network.
IV. Discussion of access to computers when labs are closed. Conversation continued with a
number of suggestions for follow-up. Andy, Ian, and Jim will report on the status of the most
likely strategies for meeting this need.
V. Dee Ann handed out a draft priority list for web projects for summer 2005.