NIU Says Crazy Internet Policy Doesn’t Apply to Students, But It Does!

Earlier today, I reported that
Northern Illinois University
maintains a restrictive Internet use policy that warns students
to avoid websites deemed harmful by the administration. Web surfers
at NIU are not supposed to use the internet for social media,
advertisement, or politics. This policy violates
free speech law, according to the Foundation for Individual Rights
in Education.

NIU responded,
issuing a statement disputing that students were being turned
away from certain websites:

“I want to assure students that — contrary to some Internet
reports — they will have access to social media websites such as
Facebook, Twitter, Instagram, Pinterest, and others,” said NIU Vice
President and Chief Information Officer Brett Coryell.  “NIU
is wholly committed to allowing free and open access to information
and only considers blocking network traffic that constitutes a well
known threat as determined by the broader IT security
community.”

A spokesperson for NIU told me that my reporting was “totally
false and cites unreliable sources.” He also said there was no harm
in simply warning students not to visit certain websites. Finally,
the NIU statement claims that certain problematic aspects of the
policy—like the social media restriction—only apply to employees,
while others—like the politics restriction—are unenforced.

As
FIRE’s Susan Kruth notes, these clarifications from NIU do
not assuage the fears of civil libertarians:

Characterizing that ominous notice received by students
attempting to visit such “Illegal or Unethical” websites as
Wikipedia as simply “portions of NIU’s longstanding acceptable use
policy” is an impressive exercise in damage-control spin, but it
certainly doesn’t fix the problem. The bottom line is that a
firewall maintained by NIU, a public university, is telling
students that clearly protected content, like a Wikipedia page, is
probably “Illegal or Unethical” and students risk punishment by
going there. That’s a problem. And that kind of bizarrely
threatening and heavy-handed warning will likely achieve the same
result as simply blocking the website, at least for students who
value their academic careers.

Furthermore, NIU’s assertion that portions of the policy are
only aimed at employees is simply untrue:

The text of the policy emphatically does not support the claim
that the policy addresses employees and not students. It states
that “all individuals, including, but not limited to,
employees, students, customers, volunteers,
and third parties, unconditionally accept the terms of this
policy.” (Emphasis added.) The policy does not indicate that
certain provisions apply only to employees. If parts of the policy
concern only employees, they should be clearly labeled as such.
They aren’t. If NIU wants to regulate staff use of the Internet, it
should write a separate staff policy—making sure that it applies
only to non-academic staff, of course, since professors also
shouldn’t have to receive warnings when trying to visit
Wikipedia!

I would second Kruth’s recommendation that NIU rewrite its
internet use policy so that students and professors again feel free
to use the internet for whatever Constitutionally-protected
purposes they so choose.