University College Cork (UCC), the Alma Mater of Ambrand Dot Com, has enabled an option in SurgeMail that allows users to have a blog, or five of them to be precise. The URL will be in the form of http://student.ucc.ie/blogs/variable_goes_here
An admirable move to be sure, but one wonders why any student interested in blogging would use UCC as the host. While the scale of operations rules out college pre-”publication” censorship it does not rule out post-”publication” censorship . The Acceptable Usage Policy covers UCC in this regard viz
other than in the course of performing your duties, use computer or network resources to access or distribute inappropriate material, including material that is in any way pornographic, offensive, obscene, abusive, racist, libellous, defamatory or threatening
Plus one imagines that access to the admin page of the blog, which is via SurgeMail, would be denied after graduation. Empirical data suggests that a users webmail (and one can assume now their SurgeMail) username and password combination ceases to be accepted within one year after graduation. The learned will survive such disconnection by setting a global forward of email prior, but this offers little solution for blogging, where constant access to an admin page is necessary for editing.
The policy also allows the College to discipline offenders, and remember that unlike many hosts the College has power over students, a poorly worded blog post could affect ones degree!
One suspects the College only turned on the blog option in SurgeMail because
- It was there
- The extra content will results in increased inlinks and an increased page rank, useful when looking for new students, particularly international students - the most profitable.
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