Pomona College Computer Science Department

Computer System Policies

[Draft of July 9, 2015; revised July 13 and July 23]

The Computer Science Department at Pomona College maintains its own computer facilities to support the coursework and research of students and faculty members. These facilities are managed independently from the college's Information Technology Services. There are four student laboratories, located in Edmunds Hall rooms 105, 219 (shared with Linguistics and Cognitive Science), 227, and 229. Some of these rooms may be reserved at times for scheduled class laboratory sessions.

The laboratories are supported by several servers that maintain files for all users, allow remote access to the facilities, and provide computing support for large projects. See the department's Facilities page for a current list of resources. [Page needs updating.]

Accounts: Accounts are available to students in Pomona College Computer Science courses, to declared majors in Computer Science, and to other members of the community with related academic interests. Usually students who have pre-enrolled in classes will have accounts and passwords ready for them at the beginning of the semester. Alternatively, accounts may be requested on our Request an Account page.

Student accounts will remain active until one year after the owner has left the college, provided that the password has not been allowed to expire. The status of each account will be reviewed periodically, usually at the end of each semester, and inactive accounts will be removed from the system.


Security: Protect your password. Do not write it down, and do not share it with anyone. You will be prompted to change your password every six months, which you can do by visiting the Change Password web page.

Store your files in your home directory, with the appropriate protections against prying eyes. (If you need help, search the web for “OS X file permissions” or “linux file permissions.”) Review the department's Academic Honesty Policy to be sure you are not inadvertently sharing your coursework.

Sharing resources: We all share the computers, servers, and network, and we want to rely on an acceptable level of performance. Do not engage in any frivolous, excessive, or inappropriate use of the systems that will degrade performance or reliability for others. If you need to run large computations, please discuss the situation with a faculty member or the system manager. They can often find the computing power that you need on a machine that is not heavily used.

Use only the programs, files, and other resources for which you are authorized. Do not probe the network or execute programs that are itended to disrupt the normal functioning of the systems or to give you unfair advantages over other students.

Quotas: Each user is allocated 2 gigabytes of storage space for files. Users with large projects may request an increase in the quota by writing to sysadmin@cs.pomona.edu. Please plan ahead; requests for increased quotas are never emergencies. Remember that simply moving a file to the Trash does not get rid of it—keep your file storage under quota by periodically emptying the Trash.


Backup: Files on the Computer Science servers, including users' home directories, are backed up periodically as protection against system failure. We may be able to recover an accidentally-deleted file, but we cannot guarantee it. Contact the systems manager if you have a need to recover a file.


Laboratory etiquette:


General policies: Users of the Computer Science facilities are subject to all of the rules that may be established by Information Technology Services and other departments of the college that apply to all computing facilities on campus. See the section on Computing Policies in the Pomona College Student Handbook and also the Policies web page at ITS. Please pay particular attention to the Claremont Colleges Policy Appropriate Use Policy.

Privileges on the Computer Science facilities and in the rest of the college are not separable. If privileges are suspended or terminated by Information Technology Services or another department on campus, then the same suspension or termination will apply to the Computer Science facilities. Conversely, a violation of the rules on Computer Science facilities will be reported to the dean’s office and the staff at Information Technology Services.