UA Internet vulgarity policy merely words

The written policy prohibits "vulgar" and "offensive" postings and says users may be terminated from the server or referral to the Dean of Stu-dents' Office.

But in the past, no stu-dent has been reprimanded for a "lack of taste," UA attorney Mike Proctor said.

"Unless its illegal, there's not a whole lot of leeway to enforce it," Proctor said.

The policy, which states, "Do not use computer systems to send, post, or display offensive, abusive, slanderous, vulgar, or defamatory messages, text, graphics, or images," should be read as a guideline rather than a law, Proctor said.

Any policy set by the university is regarded as law and can be legally challenged, said Eleanor Eisenberg, an American Civil Liberties Union attorney.

"This (policy) may be too broad and vague to pass constitutional muster," Eisenberg said, but she added that the university does have certain rights to restrict the time, place and manner of speech.

Although the struggle between Internet freedom and university censorship remains unsettled, the University of Arizona's policy may be unconstitutional on First Amendment grounds, Eisenberg said.

Still, Proctor and Center for Computing and Information Technology officials said there is no policing body that examines the content of UA's 40,000 user accounts, although the university investigates cases brought to its attention.

"The system is not to be used in a harmful fashion," said Dan Roman, Computing Center for Information Technology manager. "What is and is not accepted is open to interpretation."

A UA domain search with the Altavista search engine showed about 6.5 million hits for the expletive, "fuck." The same search showed more than 8 million appearances of the word "engineering."

There are UA Web pages entitled "We've got big butts and we cannot lie," a "Dictionary of Pimp Terms" and three Web pages on a Steward Optical Observatory server that show pictures of bestiality and offer links to "Pamela Anderson hardcore" and "Nasty young teen of the day."

The pages are under the account "Hoffmann," which belongs to William Hoffmann, professor emeritus of astronomy, who said he was unaware such material was on his account.

Hoffmann said someone hacked into the computer system as part of a nationwide break-in while he was away in August. He thought the problem had been corrected by UA officials.

"I will report that," Hoffmann said yesterday. "I will certainly follow that through."

Congress attempted clean up Internet content with the Communications Decency Act, but the legislation was ruled unconstitutional by the U.S. Supreme Court in June 1997.

The act attempted to protect minors from "indecencies" on the Internet, including nudity and obscenities.

"The ACLU has successfully challenged the first Communications Decency Act, but this area is still so new and developing so rapidly, the courts have not set precedents," Eisenberg said.

Four student Web sites from Michigan State University, the University of Texas at Austin, Duke University and Whitman College were cited for posting images of naked women.

Eisenberg said high courts have not ruled on cases involving university control of Web sites on educational servers.

A second, revised Communications Decency Act approved signed by President Bill Clinton is being contested in court by the ACLU, Eisenberg said.

Proctor said the UA is obligated to investigate any site "brought to its attention" by the public.

He said because the university is seen by the law as a vendor, and not a publisher of information, "we aren't really liable because we are not looking at the content of the information."

Proctor said for a UA account to be terminated, there would have to be "massive resource abuse or illegal behavior." Because the policy is not enforced and can be seen as a content guideline, it complies with the Constitution, he said.

Complaints about obscenities, harassment and hate speech are handled by the UA Dean of Students' Office.

Veda Hunn, assistant dean of students, said the cases look mainly at harassment, which is prohibited in the Student Code of Conduct and can result in sanctions such as suspension.

"I can't think of any time we've ever terminated (a student's computer) access," Hunn said.

Many universities offer no guidelines for Internet and network use except to regulate the amount of resources a Web page uses.

Susan Carroll can be reached via email at ace@wildcat.arizona.edu.