From: "Swisher, Bob" <bswisher@ou.edu>
To: "'it-fyi@listserv.ou.edu'" <it-fyi@lists.ou.edu>
Subject: it-fyi: E-Mail Misuse a Growing University Concern (NY Times on t
Date: Wed, 9 Jun 1999 11:40:52 -0500
June 9, 1999
By PAMELA MENDELS
E-Mail Misuse a Growing University Concern
As he does most mornings right after he awakens, John C. Wu walked groggily
to the laptop in his dorm room at Stanford University the Saturday of
Memorial Day weekend to check his e-mail.
Wu, a sophomore, expected to find the usual fare: notes with details on
assignments from teaching assistants, messages from friends, comments to
class e-mail lists.
This time, however, what he found was a shock: a two-paragraph
vulgarity-filled message spewing racial slurs and lashing out at black and
Hispanic students. "These were words I have never heard people speak," said
Wu, a computer science major. "It was terrible."
And it was widespread.
The message was received by about 25,000 students, professors and staff
members at the Palo Alto, Calif., university before computer technicians
stopped its distribution. The mailing provoked a series of letters to the
editor of the campus newspaper as well as a special meeting between
university officials and students, and is now the subject of an
investigation by a high-tech crime unit at the Santa Clara County district
attorney's office. In an open letter to the Stanford community, the
president of the university, Gerhard Casper, denounced the "appalling
epithets" in the note and said the views expressed were "personally
offensive to me, and, I trust, will be rejected by the entire community."
What is perhaps most surprising about the incident, however, is that it is
not unique. A number of universities in recent years have been shaken by
incidents in which an e-mail message containing offensive and bigoted
material got circulated, in some cases widely, on campus.
"The universities are extremely concerned about this kind of hate-mongering
behavior," said Virginia E. Rezmierski, a computer policy official at the
University of Michigan and director of a project to study computer misdeeds
in institutions of higher education. "We are very concerned that the
technology be used as positively as possible to create community, not
destroy it."
Statistics on the phenomenon are hard to find. Universities, like
corporations and other institutions, are loathe to publicize incidents
involving computer misuse, partly out of fear of bad publicity, partly out
of concern about disclosing their internal computer security measures.
But Majorie Hodges Shaw, co-director of Cornell University's Computer Policy
and Law Program, estimates that there are one to two such incidents per
semester across the United States.
And some people believe universities should brace themselves for more.
Michael J. Gennaco, an assistant U.S. attorney in Los Angeles and a
prosecutor in two cases involving racist e-mail messages at universities,
says he is currently investigating several more incidents. "It's an
increasing problem," he said. "As people have better access to e-mail, there
will be people who will abuse it. It's particularly true at universities,
where e-mail has become the mode of choice for communicating between
people."
Sometimes, the identity of the sender is known. That was the case at Cornell
in 1995, when four college freshman sent an e-mail message to friends
containing what they viewed as a joke offering 75 reasons why women should
not have freedom of speech. The message was quickly distributed to others
who failed to find its contents amusing, resulting in a campus outcry and
national publicity.
In other incidents, the identity of the sender is masked. That is what
happened several years ago at the University of Michigan, according to
Rezmierski. A racially charged message, with the return address of a
university undergraduate, was sent to numerous people on and off campus. The
address turned out to be forged; the message was not sent by the student
whose name appeared as the sender. But recipients had no way of knowing this
and bombarded the purported sender with angry responses. The true author of
the message has not been found, Rezmierski said.
At Stanford, too, the identity of the sender is so far unknown. The note
contained the return address of a Stanford student, but in his letter,
Casper said campus police did not believe the alleged source was the author
and that a university computer security specialist had determined that the
message had not been posted from the student's account.
How universities deal with the incidents vary with each episode. When the
message involves a forgery or unauthorized intrusion into the university's
computer system, its sender could be liable under various computer crime
laws or university acceptable use policies.
But when such violations have not occurred, the matter gets trickier,
because of free speech concerns. "It is difficult to address words through a
disciplinary process unless they reach the level of harassment," said Hodges
Shaw.
It is yet to be determined what Stanford policies, if any, the contents of
the message breached, said Kathy O'Toole, a Stanford spokeswoman. In his
letter, Casper said that once the sender was identified, officials would
"use all the means available to us to take appropriate action."
On its Web site, the university has posted an extensive computer use policy,
dated June 1997, which bans activities including violations of software
copyright and attempts to crash the computer system. It also forbids the use
of e-mail to send "fraudulent, harassing, obscene, threatening, or other
messages that are a violation of applicable federal, state or other law or
University policy."
For Karen K. Wang, a Stanford freshman who also received the message, a
suitable response to the incident is one that emphasizes the exchange of
ideas characteristic of an academic setting. "The only solution," she said,
"is a lot more discussion on campus attitudes toward race."