Spencer also learned the university will review its bulk e-mail policy and possibly change it.

“Initially, this was about my case,” she said. “But as I started to look into the policy more, I found that this one in particular was fundamentally flawed.”

On Sept. 15, Spencer sent an e-mail to a selected 391 faculty members, roughly 8 percent of MSU faculty, encouraging them to increase discussions over proposed changes to Welcome Week before the changes were enacted.

Katherine Gross, director of the Kellogg Biological Station, received the e-mail and asked Randall Hall, representative of Academic Technology Services, or ATS, how Spencer had obtained the list of faculty members.

On Sept. 17, Hall filed a complaint claiming that Spencer had violated three policies.

First, Hall claimed Spencer refused to obtain the proper permission needed to send the e-mail. Second, Hall claimed Spencer had misused MSU computing resources by sending the e-mail through the MSU network, even though Spencer sent the e-mail using her Gmail account. Hall also claimed Spencer broke the Network Acceptable Use Policy by sending a bulk unsolicited e-mail.

Hall said he filed the complaint because the e-mail violated policies, regardless of whether the policies were fair.

“What I base my decision on is the policy,” Hall said. “My job is not to write the policy; my job is to enforce the policy.”

After a hearing before the Student-Faculty Judiciary Board, Spencer was found guilty on Dec. 10 of misusing university resources and sending a personal bulk e-mail. A formal warning was placed in her student file.

Cindy Cohn, the legal director for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a litigation group that assisted Spencer, was told the charges were withdrawn because Gross indicated she did not want the case to be pursued. As a result, ATS decided not to continue the case.

Gross was not available for comment.

Because the case has been withdrawn, the formal warning has been removed from Spencer’s file.

“If a complaint is withdrawn, there is no record of that case,” said Rick Shafer, associate director of student life. “If somebody were to check, we would say the student does not have a judicial record.”

Spencer said although the case is closed, she is pleased the university has decided to review the policies and could rewrite or rework them.

“The university cannot arbitrarily restrict speech,” she said. “If it wants to do any type of restriction, it has to be narrowly defined.”