This policy sets the expectation for support of personally owned computing devices.

II. Scope

All College students, faculty, and staff.

III. Definitions

IV. Policy

Information Technology Services manages a Help Desk that students, faculty and staff may consult on a variety of technology-related subjects including network connectivity, virus protection, standard applications, and general troubleshooting. ITS manages repairs for all College-owned computers, typically sending them out to a vendor with which we have contracted for services.

For personally owned equipment, several local vendors are available to provide repair services for Macintosh and Windows devices. In the event of a hardware issue on a personally owned device, students, faculty and staff are expected to use the warranty and support services of the computer manufacturer or a local repair service that produced their systems. ITS staff will not attempt to repair personally owned computers with hardware issues.

The process of repairing a malfunctioning computer may result in loss of data; it is important to regularly make backups. The College provides Google Drive that can be used for document backup. For College-owned computers ITS provides CrashPlan as an automated backup service. We recommend that all students password-protect their personal computers and smartphones.

While Franklin & Marshall provides an integrated and supportive computing environment, it is the responsibility of the computer owner to:

• maintain their computer

• install vendor supplied upgrades and patches

• keep their virus protection definitions up-to-date

• backup critical data

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Policy Maintained by: Information Technology Services, Vice President and Chief Information Officer
Last Reviewed: September 20, 2023