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Faculty Organizers Sue Idaho State’s Administration Over Blocked E-Mails

February 14, 2012, 5:51 pm

Faculty organizers at Idaho State University have filed a federal lawsuit accusing administrators there of trampling their constitutional rights by blocking them from sending the entire faculty e-mails, the Idaho State Journal reports. The suit, filed by a group calling itself the Idaho State University Faculty Association for the Preservation of the First Amendment, accuses the university’s president, Arthur C. Vailas, and its interim provost, Barbara Adamcik, of violating the First Amendment and 14th Amendment rights of Idaho State’s Provisional Faculty Senate by blocking that body from sending e-mails to the entire faculty, the newspaper said. The administration began blocking the e-mails in November, following a disagreement with the Provisional Faculty Senate over the timing of a vote on a proposed constitution for the university’s faculty. The Idaho State Board of Education suspended the university’s Faculty Senate a year ago, citing an impasse between Mr. Vailas and faculty leaders.

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  • 3224243

    I suspect the “block” they’re complaining about is a restriction related to mass (bulk) email and/or the use of mailing lists.  Most universities have something similar in place whereby only certain individuals can mass mail.  I doubt the faculty organizers are prohibited from sending email where each recipient’s address is inserted individually.

  • pianiste

    “…whereby only certain individuals can mass mail.”

    So, if a professor is elected president of the faculty senate, his/her e-mail is suddenly switched to mass-mailing-permitted so that the names of the members of the senate don’t have to be typed in individually to announce a senate meeting? Or the chairman of a large department the same?

    Why would a university not permit mass e-mailing by someone employed by the university to receipients also employed by the university?

    As the old The New Yorker used to have it: Words of One Syllable Dept.

  • betterschool

    Weren’t the professors at this school up in the air about something last year that they thought was AAUP-worthy? How did that turn out and it this new charge a case of grasping?

    Almost all public and private sector institutions of any size have policies restricting mass-email, and for very good reasons. In the case of universities, anyone who reflects for a moment on the personalities of the few faculty crazies won’t have any difficulty imagining that these folks lack objectivity and discriminating power. For them, every issue that bruises their psyche will be called to the attention of the entire faculty and anyone else who will listen.

    What the suit or this article doesn’t mention is what kind of traffic a few faculty were generating prior to the ban, and for what purpose. This will come out in court. Hopefully, CHE will follow up since they didn’t get the full picture in this article.

  • quacker

    Re: “Why would a university not permit … “ 
    Because too many university employees would abuse the privilege and the email system by bombarding the rest with solicitations, promotions, and trivia of every fashion, from puppies available for free, to apartments available for sub-let, to advertising personal businesses, to the daughte’s girl scout cookies, …..

    One employee’s “important info” is another employee’s unwanted spam.

  • betterschool

     Indeed, and it quickly gets out of hand. A few years ago, we did an analysis of policies at organizations larger than 250 employees. The most common policy was to limit “all group” mailings to department heads and, even then, according to common sense guidelines. I would wager that the majority of ISU faculty want no part of this immature war being waged by a few of their colleagues.

  • 12080243

    Administrators are not going to willingly hand over their power to faculty. ISU faculty organizers: GIVE ‘EM HELL!

    Chauncey M. DePree, Jr., DBA, Professor, School of Accountancy, College of Business, University of Southern Mississippi

  • boiler

    I’ve just read the complaint, and it doesn’t sound like this is a matter of a standard restriction like the one you describe. The leader of the Provisional Faculty Senate had been able to send emails to the whole faculty before November, and had done so routinely. Other university groups can do it, both for announcements and for things like holiday greetings. The block was something new, applied specifically to stop the PFS from communicating with the faculty about the new proposed constitution. That’s what makes it a free speech issue. This isn’t a matter of network administration, but of the president blocking communicating about a specific subject. 

  • manoflamancha

    Vailas has been repressing the faculty for some time, and must be fired. That a duly elected Senate was fired, with the Board’s approval, only gave impetus to Vailas to go even further with his abuse of faculty. Now, he is at odds with presumably a new interim Faculty Senate. Eliminating mass mailings of bonafide parties in the formulation of a constitution is indeed an abridgement of the First Amendment, and maybe the Fourteenth, which mandates equal protection under the law. Where is the AAUP? That organization is heading for a state of irrelevance. If not ISU, where will you make a stand?

  • pianiste

    Oh, please. Because somebody could do something untoward with e-mails isn’t reason to restrict e-mailing in such a meat-axe way as blanket prevention of people employed by a university from group-e-mailing other employees of the university.

    Puppies for free, apartment for sub-let, Girl Scout cookies, ads for personal business, etc., are a) red herrings, and b) likely to cause enough blowback to cause self-censoring. I’ve worked at universities where group e-mailing to other univerity employees was not restricted, and none of the stuff hypothesized by quacker ever happened.

    It’s hardly a koinkydink that the Idaho State University restriction was for the purpose of preventing the ISUFA from sending e-mails regarding a proposed constitution for faculty. Neither puppies nor apartments nor Girl Scout cookies had anything to do with it.

  • 3224243

    Typically, mass email is available ONLY to the head of public safety (or designate), a key member of the marketing/communications department and the university chancellor or president for emergencies only.  Standard or run-of-the-mill missives go out by way of listservs, message boards or newsletters.

    At my previous institution, we had a variety of forums available only to members of the campus community, one of which was specifically for faculty with a subsection of that controlled by the leaders of the faculty senate.

  • veritaspotens

    Idaho State University’s administration was sanctioned by the AAUP.  See .  AAUP has been watching current developments at the institution closely.

  • betterschool

    Thanks. I have no stand on the AAUP issue. It is an issue for those involved. However, based on this coverage, and whether or not it was related, there is no constitutional right to unlimited use of corporate email, even if that corporation happens to be a university. An institution is free to set almost any policy it wishes with respect to the use of its assets. In fact, various legal rulings have had the effect of forcing institutions to set such policies with respect to the use of email. Restricting access to “all hands” email distributions — and enforcing those restrictions — is not merely permitted, it is almost universal.

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