Mass Email Policy

GUIDELINES FOR USE OF CAMPUS E-MAIL FOR GENERAL DISTRIBUTION OF MATERIALS AND INFORMATION

Purpose: To use campus electronic resources to enhance communications within the campus community.

Mass e-mail messages are a useful and convenient way of informing the campus community. However, their potential for unnecessarily consuming resources and cluttering campus inboxes require that senders of such messages adhere to some guidelines. As such, mass e-mails must be approved and sent by authorized users only.

By way of definition, mass e-mailing involves sending an unsolicited e-mail message to a group of otherwise unrelated campus e-mail addresses. For example, sending a message to all faculty or all students would be considered a mass e-mailing. Whether such messages are sent by using a personally constructed list of addresses or a system-generated list, makes no difference in the effect or applicability of this policy.

Acceptable content: While the ability to send mass e-mailings is confined to just authorized users, those users are obligated to restrict such use to mailings that fit the following criteria:

  • Non-commercial in nature
  • Related to the college's mission or business functions
  • In text format with no attachments
  • Concise (200-400 words), include a link to a web site if more information needs to be communicated
  • Must include contact information for the originator who will provide for courteous, timely and accurate disposition of questions and comments from message recipients.
  • Survey instruments must be approved by the Office of Institutional Research.

Campus constituencies: Target audiences that may be reached by e-mail distribution are:

  • State employees- All employees paid through the SUNY Human Resources Office
  • Management/Confidential employees - SUNY employees represented by the Management/Confidential negotiating unit
  • UUP members - SUNY employees represented by the United University Professionals negotiating unit
  • CSEA members - SUNY employees represented by the Civil Service negotiating unit
  • Faculty members - SUNY employees represented by the United University Professionals negotiating unit and are appointed to a title that is instructional or hold a Library title
  • Faculty full time - same as above except full-time appointment
  • Faculty part time - same as above but with part time appointment
  • Affiliated employees- Auxiliary Services, Sponsored Research and Alumni employees
  • Retiree-list – any college employee who have been identified and has an active college email account
  • All students - currently registered students
  • Off-campus students - currently registered students without an on campus address
  • On-campus students - currently registered students with an on campus address
  • Undergraduate Students- currently registered undergraduate students
  • Graduate Students -currently registered graduate students
  • Announce list - All Faculty/Staff who have not been identified as having left campus and have activated their account & all Students who are currently registered and have activated their account
  • Professional staff - SUNY employees represented by the United University Professionals negotiating unit and are not faculty by title.

Recipients do not have the ability to opt out of this system.

Procedures:

Campus departments, faculty, staff and organizations will

  • Make clear and justifiable requests for general distribution to the Vice President overseeing their area. When possible, this should be done at least 2 business days before the message needs to go out.
  • The content of the message to go out will be included in the request.
  • The content of the message to go out will include contact information either an email address and/or a phone number where recipients may direct questions or responses.
  • When a Vice President is away, requests should go to the Director of Communications and Marketing Office.
  • Specify which campus constituencies are to receive the message (see above).

Direct your request providing a consistent subject line - "Distribution for approval" to

Vice presidents will

  • Receive requests for campus general distribution e-mail.
  • Determine if the message meets the requirements for acceptable content.
  • Determine if the targeted constituent group(s) is the appropriate audience for the message.
  • Make sure that the e-mail has contact information for recipients to direct questions and responses.
  • Direct the message to be sent by an appropriate trained member of their staff.

Campus Technology Services will

  • Maintain facilities and equipment necessary to accomplish the distributions.
  • Update the above lists weekly.