Policy 116: Social Media Use (Board of Trustee's Resolution 17-06)

116.1 Policy

College of Eastern Idaho recognizes and respects the free speech rights afforded all individuals as part of the 1st Amendment to the United States Constitution, and expects that its students, faculty, and board will take full advantage of these rights to advance positive dialogue and communication on social media.

As an educational institution, it is expected that all official college social media sites and/or posts be structured in an appropriate, ethical, professional and lawful manner; accurately reflect and advance the College’s Mission Statement and Core Themes; and adhere to all College policies and procedures.

To that end, College trustees, employees, faculty, and staff should refrain from making any post or communication via the internet on any social media platform or service that uses or contains any confidential, offensive, abusive, harassing, profane, and/or hateful language including racial attacks or slurs or other language that reflects poorly on the College or has the potential to negatively affect the College’s operations, and should make every effort to ensure that their personal opinions posted on social media do not appear to the public to be the position of the College.

Violation of this policy as outlined in this document may result in loss of social media sites and/or privileges and/or appropriate disciplinary action, while still recognizing each individual’s constitutionally protected speech on social media.

These guidelines apply to all College trustees, employees, faculty, staff, entities, and social media sites established for college purposes, including but not limited to sites established by the college and its divisions, departments, and student clubs/organizations.

For the purpose of this policy, "social media platform or service" refers to, but is not limited to blogs (web-based journals) and microblogs (e.g. Tumblr), collaborative websites (e.g., Wikipedia, etc.), message boards, social networking sites (e.g. Facebook, Twitter), podcasts (multimedia distributed over the internet), video sharing (e.g., YouTube), and photo sharing (e.g. Instagram).