This policy applies to all Gettysburg College organizations including but not limited to academic departments, administrative offices, and student clubs and organizations.
Last updated: February 6, 2019
On this page:
Introduction
The web is an essential source of information and a communication medium for all College audiences: current and prospective students, faculty, colleagues at other academic institutions, foundation officers, parents, alumni, and media. Our website is a medium of communication that defines who we are today and who we will be in the future.
Web liaisons
Each department or office will be responsible for appointing a person(s) who are web liaisons. Web liaisons are responsible for maintaining department or office web pages, keeping content up-to-date and following guidelines established by the Office of Communications and Marketing. Liaisons are expected to attend regular update meetings and communicate updates from those meetings back to their respective department or office.
Before being provided access to the Content Management System Web liaisons will be expected to attend a mandatory training session and pass a use and accessibility assessment. They are also expected to attend refresher trainings on a periodic basis.
Content Management System (CMS)
The CMS is the system that stores and displays official College web content. Management and use of the CMS will comply with all official policies of the College, including but not limited to, discrimination and harassment policies, compliance with all federal, state, and local laws, statutes, and regulations, brand standards, confidentiality of records, positive data security and appropriate use of computing facilities. Any official College information made available to external users is subject to review by the College to ensure consistency with laws and College policies.
Accessibility
All new and redesigned College web content published in the CMS after January 1, 2019 must be in compliance with the World Wide Web Consortium's Web Content Accessibility Guidelines (WCAG) 2.0 at Conformance Level AA as its official Technical Guidelines. College web pages published before January 1, 2019 must assess compliance with the technical guidelines and submit a review summary and remediation plan to address any areas of non-compliance to the Americans with Disabilities Act (ADA) subcommittee on web accessibility by January 1, 2019.
Clubs and organizations
All official college student clubs and organizations will have a landing page whose content will be the responsibility of the office of Student Activities and First-Year Programs. Individual student clubs and organizations will also be given space in the CMS to upload pages and content. While these pages will not be subject to College templates they are subject to the other polices stated here. Clubs and Organizations may request their websites be linked to the landing pages if they are hosted on the CMS.
Content
Information appearing on the department, office, or organization pages in the CMS is the responsibility of the originating department, office, or organization and must be in compliance with all college standards. The Office of Communications and Marketing and the Information Technology Division will have full access to all files.
When department or office pages are developed by non-campus individuals or groups, the College department or office will be responsible for obtaining the files and placing them on the server in compliance with CMS standards. Access to the CMS server is restricted to campus account holders only.
In some cases, the originating department, office or organization must secure appropriate approval through the Office of Communications and Marketing. Those cases include:
- All pages that fall under the top level navigation of the site
- Academic Department Homepages, program description, and program requirements pages
- Online catalog
In each department or office website certain pieces of data will populate from the College system of record, including:
- Faculty/Staff listing
- Course listing (if applicable)
Third-party hosting
Departments or offices may need to host web services offsite with a third-party vendor. Each department or office should contact the Office of Communications and Marketing to request approval of such offsite services.
Personal web pages
Gettysburg College recognizes the value and potential of personal publishing on the Internet and so allows and encourages students, staff, and faculty to develop personal web pages. However, the College does not accept any responsibility and shall not be liable for the content of those pages.
Inappropriate web content
Materials are prohibited on the Gettysburg College Website if they:
- Contain copyrighted information without written consent of copyright owner
- Violate federal, state, or local laws or regulations
- Violate College policies
- Are defamatory to any group(s) or individual(s) or are disparaging of any group(s), organization(s), or institution(s)
- Are abusive, profane or sexually offensive
- Consist of information that may injure someone else and/or lead to a lawsuit or criminal charges
- Use the College name and logo without official authorization in ways that imply endorsement of commercial organizations, their products, or services
- Are advertisements for commercial products or enterprises
- Represent the operation of a commercial enterprise(s)
- May constitute an invasion of privacy of any group or individual
- Violate the confidentiality of college or student records
The types of material listed above or any direct link to another page containing such material should not be included in any Gettysburg College page. Gettysburg College reserves the right to remove any page or material that is in violation of this or any Gettysburg College policy.