Campuswide Communications

Guidelines for the Campus Community

Cal Poly is committed to open and consistent communication with its campus community

Mass Emails: Review and Scheduling

Divisions, colleges, departments and other offices may occasionally need to send informational communications to the entire campus community or to large groups, including all employees, all students, or entire divisions or colleges. 

To maintain consistency, avoid overlapping messages, and ensure that style and content are approved as official campus communications, all mass email messages must be reviewed and scheduled through University Communications and Marketing prior to deployment. 

To submit for review, please send email content and proposed date/time of deployment to media@calpoly.edu with the subject line “Mass Email Calendar,” at least one week prior to deployment. 

For more on campus policy around email and large mailings, please see Campus Administrative Policy 1222.

Institutional Neutrality and Communications on Current Events

In addition to standard communications aimed at keeping students and employees informed about campus operations and programming, current events will from time to time elicit calls for campuswide messages, for the university to offer perspective, voice support for campus community members and/or provide information on related policies or programming.

Cal Poly’s principal objective is to educate students. The university generally seeks to avoid determining, setting or weighing in on public policy or political issues. One of the important roles of the institution is to provide a neutral environment for open discussion and thoughtful consideration of a variety of perspectives and ideas. The university’s focus is not on influencing or directing what students should think; rather, the institution provides students an opportunity to learn how to think by considering for themselves a multitude of viewpoints and arguments and drawing their own conclusions.

With this in mind, Cal Poly’s general practice is to offer campuswide communications on current events only when they have a direct impact on a majority of our campus community or on higher education specifically. The decision to send a campuswide note is always made after careful consideration and consultation by the President and President’s Cabinet.

This communications practice is in place to help avoid differing expectations around what does or does not warrant a campuswide comment; to help ensure the university always communicates in a fair and consistent manner; and to avoid over-communicating to the campus community and diluting the voice of Cal Poly’s leadership.

With a campus community of nearly 25,000 people, almost all current events can have a direct or indirect impact on some portion of our student body and/or workforce. The campus community will always include a wide variety of viewpoints and opinions. Without neutrality, the university puts itself in the impossible role of choosing which opinions and viewpoints are worthy of endorsement and publication — and risks alienating community members with such choices. 

There will be cases in which a campuswide message from university administration has not been issued (because it does not meet the parameters detailed above), but a message from an office, division or department’s leadership to a targeted audience is deemed appropriate. In addition, alternative forms of communication and outreach (including web postings or social media) may occur for certain situations. UCM should be consulted in all such cases to discuss the aim and appropriateness of the proposed communication and provide review of final drafts.

Solidarity Statements and Individual Opinions

Under the approach of institutional neutrality, statements of solidarity through official university channels without prior approval are not permissible. Such statements often take a political stance; risk alienating portions of the university community; may be interpreted as official university statements or endorsements; and can inadvertently set precedent and expectation for future communications that may not be deemed appropriate.

Individuals within our university community have their own thoughts, ideas and feelings about happenings in the world, and the university upholds the right of every individual within its community to express themselves through their personal channels. Individuals should not speak on behalf of the university without prior consent or in any way give the impression that their personal opinions reflect those of the organization as a whole. This includes posting individual opinions on university websites, university social media accounts or other official channels such that the message could be interpreted as being offered by the institution and not the individual.

University Communications and Marketing is always available to discuss these matters and offer counsel on how best to provide clear and direct communication to a target audience while adhering to the university’s policy of institutional neutrality. Please contact Matt Lazier, Assistant Vice President for Communications and Media Relations.

Student and Employee Resources

Cal Poly provides a wealth of resources on a wide variety of topics, for both students and employees. Please feel free to include these resources as appropriate in targeted messaging at the division, college, student and employee level.