Maintained by ic@ucsc.edu
This page updated:
April 09, 2007

Computer Labs - Lab Policies

Lab use policy consists of the following rules and the policies listed below. Lab customers will be responsible for these as well as the extended version of policies. Any person found violating the lab rules or policies may lose their lab privileges as well as a temporary or full suspension of their UCSC account.

• No food or drink, water in special containers excepted. Please see the extended version of policies for details.
• No bicycles or bike parts.
• No disruptive behavior.
• No moving the lab equipment and/or cables.
• No laptops on the wired network (exception: Instructors for instructional purposes). It is okay to have laptops in the labs and be on the wireless network, they just can't be physically plugged into our jacks.
• No illegal copying of ANY materials.
• Keep sound levels to a minimum.
• The labs are for UCSC students, staff and faculty ONLY. We reserve the right to check IDs.

Additional University, Lab and Computing Policies

• Sexual Harassment
• Student Access to ITS Computing Facilities
• Policies for Use of UCSC Computing Facilities
• Copyright Policies
• Copyright Law Archived at Stanford
• Electronic Communications Policy

Extended Lab Policies

Access Policy

• UCSC student instruction has priority over all other lab uses.
• All labs are open during the academic term (typically during the 10 weeks of instruction and 1 week of finals).
• In open access times, labs are open to all currently registered UCSC undergraduate and graduate students. Students are required to show proof of current registration (such as a student identification card).
• When lab workstations are used to full capacity during high use times, students who have a scheduled class or section in a particular lab, or whose classwork requires specific software or hardware available in a particular lab, have priority over other students.
• Labs are funded for regular academic quarters only (fall, winter and spring).

Audience and Intended Use

The labs are primarily maintained for the instructional needs of the faculty, students and Instructional Support staff of UCSC. As a public service, the labs are also made available, when not in use for campus needs, to external organizations on a complete cost recovery basis as described in the Lab Rates Policy. User IDs are checked at all labs to enforce these restrictions. In general, all authorized UCSC students have equal priority in their use of the facilities; nobody has "bumping rights". An exception to this policy is the case of a student needing to do classwork requiring lab-specific software or hardware. Such a user would have "bumping rights" over users of more generally available software or hardware (e.g. Microsoft Word).

Contents and Configuration

The standard lab configuration includes: a projection system, a recycling bin, an uninterruptable power supply (UPS) for servers and other critical equipment, furniture meeting campus standards as they are defined at the time of purchase and the lab configuration requirements as mandated by the Instructional Technology Policy Council (ITPC). A description of the hardware and software configuration of each lab is accessible to lab users.

Lab security is organized as room security (door alarms, motion sensors and keypad door locks), cable lockdown of equipment, fiber loop alarms to all equipment and video surveillance systems. Room security, cable lockdowns and fiber loops are required in all labs.

Any additional software or lab staff supported hardware needed in the labs must be provided and/or specially requested by the instructor. Any such hardware or software must be approved by the lab management and can only be installed by lab staff. Approval for such software or hardware must be obtained 1 quarter in advance for equipment or software needing to be purchased (by the instructor or IC) and 4 weeks in advance for all other requests. By default, specially requested software and equipment is kept in the labs for one quarter; special requests for extended support will be accommodated to the degree possible given other demands on the lab resources (e.g. disk space).

NOTE: Lab staff is only responsible for the installation of instructor supplied hardware or software. It is the instructor's responsibility to verify the full functionality of such equipment or software and to support users in its use. Except as noted in the previous two paragraphs, the Instructional Computing staff will not be responsible for any user owned hardware used in the labs. For any such equipment to be used in the labs the user must assume all liability for any damage caused to the equipment while it is in the labs, no matter what the cause of the damage, and must confirm the legality of any software contained or used on such hardware. The connection of any such hardware to, or installation of any such software on lab equipment must be performed by lab staff.

All system and application directories or folders are write-protected from users. As a policy, students are not provided writable space on the fileservers and are expected to store their files on removeable media (zip disk, external hard drives, etc.). In those cases where users must be able to store files on the fileserver, these user-writable directories or folders are treated as temporary storage and are not backed up.

All printing on lab printers is charged for on a full cost recovery basis as described in the Lab Rates Policy. Only lab-supplied paper may be used in lab printers. Users cannot provide their own paper.

Creation, Upgrade and Shutdown Policy

The basic requirements for the creation of a new lab are an identified demand and identified resources to setup and maintain the required facilities and support staff. The minimum size lab that will be supported is a 20 station lab.

Food and Drink Policy, updated Fall 2005

No food or drink is allowed at the computers except water. Water in sealed containers is allowed at workstations, but bottles must remain closed and on the floor when not in use. Containers are not allowed on desks. All other beverages must be placed on the Food and Drink Table.

Printing

Nearly all of the Instructional Computing Labs have accessible laser printers and there is a color laser printer at the Arts Instructional Computing Lab at Porter College. For a listing of the locations of printers, please see our hardware page. (More information on printing.)

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