Email & Social Networking Guidelines

Student Rep Email Guidelines

As a Student Rep, you can email the students you represent (your constituents) in order to gauge student opinions, or provide updates on progress you’ve made. You can publicise your @sussex.ac.uk
email address, so that students can contact you directly with their comments or concerns.

Your school or department should give you access to an email list so
that you can contact your constituents directly. Please make sure that you follow the guidelines below when contacting the students you represent. Failure to comply with these guidelines may result in your email privileges being removed, which would limit your ability to effectively communicate with the students in your department or school.

• Always use your @sussex.ac.uk email address when contacting the students you represent. Please do not use a personal email account such as hotmail or yahoo.
• Ensure that you use the email list ONLY to send communications relevant to your role as a Student Rep – for example, it would not be acceptable to email your constituents about a party or club night.
• Use appropriate language, and do not send messages, or link to websites, that are offensive, obscene, or abusive.
• Refrain from sending an excessive number of emails.
• Make sure that you identify yourself as a Student Rep (e.g. by adding an email signature) when sending emails related to your position.

Example email signature:

Tips for effective email communication

There are some simple ways to make sure you get the best from your email communications with the students you represent, you might like to think about the following:

• Most people will read the first few lines of an email and decide then whether or not it is relevant; if you put either a contents list or a short synopsis at the beginning you may be able to draw more attention to the rest of the email
• You should endeavour to ensure that personal emails cannot be interpreted as official University or Union correspondence. You can do this by always using your Sussex account for rep business
• Be careful when using humour or sarcasm within a message, as this can be easily misinterpreted
• Communicate with other reps over the sending of emails. If the system is set up so that you can only email you whole department, talk to each other and consider sending one email clearly recognizable as being from the student reps. This may help to reduce the overall number of emails being sent out to students.
• Refrain from acronyms and jargon , not all students will understand what SEF or SSEG mean
• Consider if email is the best form to communicate your message
• Think before clicking ‘Reply All’ as this can generate lots of replies and make comments hard to follow
• If you are angered or upset click save not send and revisit the email once you have calmed down
• Do not email anything that you would not otherwise put in writing.
• Creating a Facebook group for your school or department is a really good way of keeping in touch with the students you represent. Please refer to the separate *social networking guidelines* below.

Guidelines for Student Reps usage of online social networking sites

Social networking websites such as Facebook, Twitter, My Space and Bebo can be a big part of your work as a Rep. Setting up a group for your constituency can be a great way of engaging students with the Student Rep Scheme, and getting loads of feedback about your Department or School.

The University and USSU have compiled some guidelines to hep you protect yourself while using social networking sites as part of your representative role.

Personal profiles:

• Set privacy settings to prevent people seeing what you would not want them to see without your knowledge
• Defamations, bullying or harassment via social networking sites or email can (and has) resulted in disciplinary action from the University. Defamation is also against English Law and so you could even be sued. (Defamation = communicating a false claim stated / implied to be factual which may harm the reputation of an individual).
  Privacy and feelings of others should be respected at all times
• Anything that appears under your screen name will be attributed to you. Care should be taken to avoid using language which could be deemed as offensive to others. Think about who may be able to
  access your profile. This could include potential employers, contacts, etc which may impact on your future prospects. Current students in your constituency, or other Student Reps may also access this info, so think carefully about what you want them to be able see.
  If someone uploads photos that you feel are not appropriate then it
  may be worth asking them to remove them
• In your time as a student representative it is highly unlikely that you will be contacted by the local or national press. If, however, you are contacted as student rep contact the Director of Communications for guidance. If you are contacted as an individual then remember that what you say can be traced back to you, and may be cut or
  interpreted in a why differently to how you had intended

Groups:

• If you chose to set up a group for your cohort to discuss issues
  relating to your department, subject or school, you MUST invite the Student Rep Support Team to join the group.
  Click here to visit the Facebook Profile
• Remember the points above such as defamation, comments attributed to you, offensive language and the media. Groups should not be set up to attack an individual, but could be set up to discuss issues in a constructive way
• If discussions start in a group related to your course, the University or Union of which you are a member or an administrator, and you feel that they may be contravene any of the guidelines set out above it is suggested that you make contact with those who have expressed their feelings and as their student rep take the issues forward as suggested in your training.