The Undergraduate Student Government Senate clarified its own computer and network security policy at last night's meeting.

The group decided that it is not acceptable for members to give out their user ID and password in the office. This measure aims to prevent members from logging on to a computer, leaving the office and allowing another individual access under their name. However, access is allowed to others if the ID owner is present.

"It surprises me that with all the current student issues we've seen on this campus and read in the newspaper, the senate decided that their only legislative action of the evening would address an internal matter about who in senate uses what computer," USG President Justin Zartman said. "That can't be their most pressing issue."

However Town Sen. Jason Covener found this legislation necessary.

"This says that if you're having a committee meeting, someone else can type on your computer provided that you're there supervising and watching them type," Covener explained. "If you're logged on and want me to come on and mark up a resolution we're working on, then I can do that if you're watching me."

He added that the current policy is "a piece of paper tape to the computer that says do not log anyone else on."

Several USG members disagreed with the purpose of the action.

"This is ridiculous, it totally negates the reason why we have these rules, because of illegal activity years ago," Zartman said.

Covener does not have a user ID or password because he did not request either when returning to Penn State after his arrest in 1998 and resignation from the post of senate president, following an investigation related to computer tampering in the USG office.

"It blows me away that some senators do not read AD20," Town Sen. Steph Wood said, referencing a section in the Penn State policy manual. "Letting someone else type on your computer would be sharing your privileges, and that is a violation of the policy."

She cited the part from the Penn State Computer and Network Security Policy ensuring accounts or computer and network access privileges are restricted to an individual's private use only.

System users must not share their accounts, or grant accounts to others. The rules also regulate that no one can extend their own authorized computer or network access privileges to others.

In response to this, Covener said that then many departments are violating university policy, and that Wood's arguments were just a "knee-jerk reaction."

"If I ever logged anyone on (in the past), I was violating policy," Wood said. "It is inconvenient that one person can't use a computer while someone is logged on, but there are security issues to deal with and I think that we are given a privilege to use the university's connection, and thus we should follow their policy."