BFC discusses future of technology for IU students

"That was important for us to hear," said BFC President David Daleke. "(Oncourse) is used by many faculty. There is a high student demand for it, and it looks like there is going to be a possibility that it will be expanded in the future and that it will become even more functional for those students and faculty."\nWheeler also commented on UITS' plan to implement the "Pure Message" anti-spam system in the upcoming months. The system would block spam e-mails from being sent to IU Webmail accounts. \n"The system will send you a note at the end of the day, saying 'here's the list of all the messages I thought were spam,'" said Associate Vice President of Telecommunications Brian Voss in an article Monday in the IDS .\nIU is planning to spend $300,000, and the project should be completed by February 2004.\nOne of the last topics for the day's meeting was a follow-up on the strategic plan and mission statement that was led by law professor Fred Cate. After being sent through the long-range planning committee, the BFC's Strategic Planning Committee looked to make a change to a statement that had been added. The mission added was to "guarantee academic freedom for all University community." This statement was changed to say that the University will "promote open discourse and respect for academic freedom."\n"Academic freedom is sort of a legal term that faculty and librarians have, but not all members of the University community," Cate said. "So we thought it was important to have a statement in there that didn't just apply to faculty but had meaning for students, staff and everybody."\nThe council discussed whether or not the change weakened the statement as a whole. The majority felt that it did not, as the change was passed when it came up for vote. \nThe strategic plan and mission statement revisions, initiated by IU-Bloomington Chancellor Sharon Brehm and approved by the BFC last spring, were begun to identify and strengthen campus academics. Brehm said previously that the statement was to be revised every year.\nThe statement can be found at the Bloomington Faculty Council Web site www.indiana.edu/~bfc under the Dec. 2 agenda.