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Daily Message Guidelines

About Daily Messages

The Daily Message system is meant to convey timely information from and to members of the Williams community about college events and policies. Because the focus is on the college community, subscription is limited to faculty, staff, students.

The Williams Office of Communications reviews all Daily Message submissions. Submitters will receive a confirmation if your message is approved and scheduled. If a submission doesn’t meet the guidelines, we try to provide an explanation along with suggestions for revisions or other, more appropriate outlets.

Deadlines and Guidelines

The deadline for submission of messages is 3 p.m. Monday through Friday. Monday messages must be submitted by 3 p.m. the prior Friday.

There is no service on Saturday or Sunday, or after hours. Messages can be submitted in advance, and you can specify the publication date(s). If you do so, your message will be approved the last weekday before your publication date.

Only one message per event or announcement is allowed in the faculty and staff editions, and these messages can only run on one date. For the student edition you can request that your message run on two dates, if you wish.

Criteria

Eligibility and submission rules

  • To post a message you must be a Williams faculty or staff member or student, using a williams.edu email address.
  • Submissions are accepted only from representatives of administrative and academic departments, programs and centers, and recognized student organizations (RSOs and MinCo RSOs). Messages posted by a student must include the name of the RSO.
  • Submissions must pertain to college events and announcements of interest to a campus audience.
  • Events hosted by persons or organizations outside of Williams community may not be posted to Daily Messages, unless they are formally co-sponsored by a Williams department, unit or RSO.

Content guidelines

  • To get the widest readership, we recommend short headlines that explain your news or event in brief. Successful messages tend to be clear, concise and tightly focused on essential information (event time and location, etc.).
  • Content should be appropriate for distribution to a broad audience with diverse values, beliefs and sensitivities. If you want to share a point of view on a topic, please use social media instead. Submissions that include such content will be returned for revision.
  • We cannot allow commercial messages, lost and found notices, fundraising efforts, messages about the sale of goods or services or messages promoting, recruiting or hiring on behalf of outside organizations.
  • Federal law also prohibits the use of college resources, including the Daily Messages system, to support or oppose political candidates or ballot issues. Consult Williams’ guidelines on college resources and political activity for details.
  • Williams neither endorses nor opposes any political candidate or organization. The views expressed at events promoted in Daily Messages are solely those of the organizers and/or speakers.

Surveys

  • Invitations to participate in human subjects research (surveys, behavioral studies, etc.) will only be accepted if the project is conducted or sponsored by a Williams faculty member and has been approved or exempted by the college’s Institutional Review Board; or for the purposes of thesis research. For thesis projects, please include the name of your adviser: Communications will contact them to approve your request.
  • In order to control the volume of surveys on campus, messages about other surveys that do not meet the above requirements will not be accepted.

The Communications Office cannot guarantee publication of submitted material and is not responsible for the accuracy of information submitted to us.

Questions? Contact us at dailymessage@williams.edu.

Maybe Williams Switchboard is a better place for your message?

Switchboard is a bulletin board that lets you ask for what you need and offer what you have within the Williams community. Whether you’re faculty, staff, student or alumni, use Switchboard to connect with people who share your interests.

Visit the Williams Switchboard site: https://williams.switchboardhq.com/