I.  Justification and Statement of Policy

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

Original Effective Date: 
Revision Dates:  September 14, 2022