Who gets accounts (was Re: Advice, opinions, and ideas sought.)

[Charles H. Buchholtz]

In article <1991Jun26.120235.27892 at mp.cs.niu.edu> rickert at mp.cs.niu.edu (Neil Rickert) writes:
>A requester, whether student or faculty from another
>department, is advised to request access in writing to the dept chair.

We have a slightly looser policy on our machine, which also works
well.  If the request is from a student, faculty or staff member of
the department, then I verify their status (faculty is trivial, staff
I check with the office manager, and students get checked with the
grad or undergrad assistant).  If the request is from anyone else, I
tell them that the request needs to come from a faculty member of my
department.  Any faculty member can create an account for anybody.

I keep a record of why the account was created and who the sponsor
was.  Twice a year I go through the accounts and eliminate those
students, faculty and staff who are no longer here.  I them mail a
list to every sponsor listing the accounts that have sponsored and
asking which should be deleted.

Of course, I give three week warnings, grace periods, etc.  Actually,
in most cases I don't delete accounts, I make a note that the account
is in grace period and delete it in the next cycle.  This avoids a lot
of "I need another week to move my files" hassles.

--
Charles H. Buchholtz       Systems Programmer     chip at seas.upenn.edu
	      School of Engineering and Applied Science
		      University of Pennsylvania