USP CAUTIONS STUDENTS, STAFF ON SOCIAL MEDIA POLICY

Students and staff at the University of the South Pacific have been encouraged to read and familiarise themselves with the university’s social networking policy.

The email was sent out from Manager Communications of

USP’s Strategic Partnerships, Advancement & Communications (SPAC), Vineeta Nand.

“Recently we have seen that a lot of engagement on USP’s official social media channels relating to current events,” Ms Nand said.

She said any breach, effective yesterday, can lead to disciplinary action. Administrators of all USP official social media channels were encouraged to: be polite and responsible exercise good judgement and common sense pause before posting Be accountable and correct mistakes

“Effective today all posts on official USP channels that are deemed to be in contravention of the policy or seen to bring disrepute to USP will be removed. Please refrain from tagging any official channels from your personal accounts unless your post positively supports USP’s values, missions and goals,” she said. Part of the university social networking policy guidelines include:

Staff and students are responsible for their personal posts on their own sites and on the sites of others. When posting their personal point of view, USP staff and students should neither claim nor imply speaking on USP’s behalf

Staff and students are not to post confidential or proprietary information about USP, its students, its alumni or fellow employees

Staff and students are not to discuss events that involve naming or uploading images of individuals on a social media site without their permission

Last year USP recorded 31,310 student enrolment with 2000 staff.