Email Policy

Summary

This policy defines Bowdoin College's e-mail retention and usage to ensure that e-mail is properly preserved when needed and deleted when not needed.

Policies

New E-mail Accounts

1. All new employees are given an email account when they are hired as a part of Human Resources on-boarding.
2. Admissions initiates new student e-mail account creation when the student's deposit is received in April before matriculation.
3. E-mail for sponsored accounts or others are generated by Information Technology if the account has been approved.

Usage, Personal Responsibility

1. Official College communications will be sent to users College e-mail accounts.
2. Email is available for the duration of the account while at Bowdoin, but once the account is disabled via termination or graduation, access is removed and the content is deleted within 90 days.
   1. Graduated student content will be deleted 90 days after account termination, which takes place on or around October 31 of the graduation year.
3. All College users are not permitted to automatically forward or conduct official College communications using external e-mail providers.
4. E-mail efficiency is critical to the business functions of the College. Users of the Bowdoin College e-mail systems agree to delete unnecessary e-mails routinely to avoid wasting College resources.
   1. Routine deletion of e-mails should include the following: Inbox, Deleted Items/Trash, Junk/Spam, Sent and Drafts. User-created folders should be deleted when they are no longer needed.

Privacy

1. E-mail in Bowdoin email systems belongs to Bowdoin, except when superseded by the College's Intellectual Property Policy. Both active and terminated accounts, under exceptional circumstances, may be disclosed to authorized personnel or external parties, but only as required by customary business practice or law.
2. Messages sent and received via Bowdoin's e-mail system must be kept confidential by senders and recipients, as well as by College employees and contractors who may have access to these accounts through their customary duties and responsibilities.

Archived E-mail Messages

E-mail messages and attachments that you send or receive in conducting the business of the College are official College records and are subject to the College's records management policies and retention schedules. (See https://library.bowdoin.edu/arch/college-history-and-archives/records-management.shtml for the College's Records & Archives Management guidelines.)  College e-mail should be kept or deleted based on content, just as you would for comparable paper documents.

Applicability

 This policy applies to all employees, students and email systems operated by Bowdoin College.

Definitions

 Delete, purge, archive and back-up e-mail - When you "delete" an e-mail, it is actually only flagged for deletion and remains on the system; at this point, you can still restore it from the Trash folder. Once a deleted message is "purged" from the system (e.g., via a "purge" command, or emptying the Trash), it can no longer be undeleted, but it can be retrieved for 30 days by IT from back-ups.

Roles and Responsibilities

 The Chief Information Security Officer is responsible for the maintenance of this policy, and for responding to questions.

Implementation