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Web Filtering Policies and Procedures

Approved by Office of Academic Administration
  • RWC uses a Web filtering service that prevents students, faculty and staff from accidentally going to a site with in-appropriate content.
  • If a student, faculty or staff wants to access a site that the College* deemed inappropriate**, they are prevented from going to that site and a screen is displayed telling them that the site is blocked.
  • What happens if a site you want to access is blocked:
    • Currently if a student, faculty or staff wants to access a website that is blocked, a page is displayed telling them the category that the site belongs to and the reason for blocking it.
    • At that time, the individual is provided a link and can request the website to be reviewed by the web filtering company.  The company will review the site and determine if it was incorrectly classified.
    • If the web filtering company determines that the website was in fact incorrectly classified, they will re-classify it and the site will be available. The initiator will get an email that the site has been re-classified and is available to view.
    • If the website was correctly classified, the web filtering company will deny the request to change the website classification and will send an email back to the initiator.
    • At this point, if the person still feels that the RWC community (all students, faculty and staff) should have access to this website, they can forward their request and their rationale to the office of academic administration. The office of academic administration will review the website and its appropriateness to the complete RWC community and will either advise IT to open the website to the community or respond to the initiator and let him/her know that their request was denied.
    • Faculty members who are engaged in research and run into a blocked site at RWC can access the same site from their home Internet connection (provided they are not using a web filtering service at home).
*Provost’s office
**The filtering program that is used provides general categories of types of sites that can be selected to be blocked.  Of all the general categories listed, the College has selected only gambling, pornography, and related sub-categories.