Effective immediately, the new online commenting policy is as follows: 

Readers are encouraged to comment on articles in a respectful manner. The Colgate Maroon-News believes that online commenting should promote polite debate and intelligent discussion, and that our website should not become a platform for individuals to post ignorant, offensive or otherwise inappropriate remarks. 

Therefore: 

* Comments containing defaming, denigrating, offensive or incriminating language regarding or directed at a specific person and/or groups, as well as comments containing ad hominem attacks are subject to removal by the Maroon-News. Examples of comments subject to removal include (but are not limited to) comments disparaging ethnicity, race, nationality, sex, sexual orientation, belief, creed, ancestry, martial status, military or veteran status, age, disability or social class. 

* Comments containing profanity or language that is incoherent or vulgar are subject to deletion by the Maroon-News. 

* Comments which fail to pertain to the article on which they are posted are subject to removal by the Maroon-News. 

* The Maroon-News also reserves the right to remove comments in support of violence or comments supporting behavior in violation of the law. 

* Comments determined to be a form of slander, libel and/or other illegal tactics are subject to deletion by the Maroon-News. 

* In the case of unsolicited advertising or spam within comments, the Maroon-News also reserves the right to remove said comments. 

* Comments that contain hyperlinks to external sites or comments that contain language and/or content that is unchanged/nearly unchanged from a prior comment are subject to removal by the Maroon-News. 

* Current Maroon-News editors are prohibited from commenting on online content. 

Any comments outside of these parameters that the Maroon-News finds offensive are also subject to removal at the discretion of the Editors-in-Chief. 

Visitors to the Maroon-News website are encouraged to report comments that they believe are subject to removal under the aforementioned stipulations. Users should send an e-mail to [email protected] to report comments in question, and the e-mail should contain the name of the article on which the comment appears, the comment in question and the reason for removal. 

The opinions expressed in comments on the Maroon-News website are those of the individual writers and do not necessarily represent the views of the Maroon-News or Colgate University. 

The Maroon-News reserves the right to amend or add to this policy at any time without providing advanced notification.