Odyssey encourages an atmosphere focused on work, study, and writing. Email and other Internet activity tend to distract from this, so during the class term (the weeks during which the course is held), students are urged to minimize the time spent on email, blogging, social networking, computer games, and non-writing-related Web surfing
Because the classes are demanding and time is short, we ask that students refrain from sending out emails to the whole class. For the same reasons, we ask that students refrain from setting up email lists, email groups, social network groups, or any similar structure that facilitates and encourages electronic communication between multiple students in the class. If you have questions, problems, or a grievance, please contact the instructor or Director Jeanne Cavelos. If you have important information to convey, please give it to the instructor, and she will distribute it to the class. If you have jokes, save them until the class term is over. It’s hard enough to keep up with the workload without an inbox full of things that are not related to your writing.
Though we cannot prevent people from blogging during the class term, we strongly discourage it. Blogging takes time away from your class assignments. Blogging can also cause a lot of difficulty and hard feelings in the class, and we ask students to think very carefully, and follow these rules, before posting anything on the Internet during and after the class term.
• Critiques are meant only for those in the class and not for anyone else. It is not appropriate to describe what anyone said in a critique, or how anyone reacted to a critique. It is not appropriate to quote from a critique, nor to air personal grievances over a critique on the Internet. Critiques are valuable because students feel free to give their honest analysis of the work they critique. Violating the protected atmosphere of the critiques violates the trust of your classmates and can damage the honest evaluation of your work. If you have a problem with a critique, you should go to the instructor to resolve it, rather than vent uselessly to the world.
• Details of student stories or novels should not be posted on the Internet. You may have just come up with the only original idea left in the universe. You don’t want it plastered all over the Internet before you’ve had a chance to perfect and sell your story.
• It should go without saying, but posting derogatory descriptions of your fellow students or mocking their writing is unprofessional in the extreme. Just don’t.