Policy on Privacy

Submitted by the Demographics and Diversity Task Force

Approved by the Executive board on Oct. 31, 2018

What information is being collected?

Contact Information 

Contact information is the information collected when you join the Society, submit material for publication, or register for an event, including the name, institution, address, telephone number, and email address. Contact information is stored in a secured database.

Demographic Information 

The Society for Music Theory also collects demographic information, including gender, sexual orientation, race and ethnicity, education level, employment status, professional status, primary area of teaching, and the number of colleagues one has in the field. Demographic information is collected when you join the Society for Music theory, submit material for publication, or register for an event, and is stored in a secured database. Members may decide not to provide this information, but are encouraged to consult “How the Society for Music Theory uses this information” below before making their decision.

Technical Information  

Other information that may be collected can be technical information such as the IP address, session activity, and web browser used. The Society for Music Theory website uses cookies to improve functionality and usability. This information is used to improve the website, track use of information, and improve functionality.

How the Society for Music Theory uses this information

We use the contact information you share with the Society in the following ways:

1. To establish your membership record when you join, renew, or reinstate your membership.
2. To register you for a conference or event.
3. To provide you with information about the society.
4. To alert you to upcoming events or new services or features, such as upcoming meetings, awards and/or initiatives.
5. To process your order, and if necessary, to contact you about your order, membership, or registration.
6. To request your feedback about your experience with the Society for Music Theory.
7. To send you administrative communications. These may include administrative emails, confirmations, technical notices, updates, and security alerts.
8. To respond to your comments and questions and provide you with user support.
9. To allow you access to members-only areas of the website.

We use the demographic information you share with the Society in the following way:

10. To track progress over multiple years toward achieving part of our mission goal: “fostering diversity, inclusivity, and gender equity in the field.” We want to be informed demographically in order to best serve all of our members, with particular attention to those who have historically been underserved or underrepresented in our society.

How we share this information

Contact Information

The Society for Music Theory membership directory is available only to current members of the society in a members-only section of the website. Participation in our member directory is optional, and we will not share your contact information without your consent. Contact information will not be released to third parties except to further member benefits and to comply with the law, for example:

• To fulfill a member service, such as releasing information to the journal publisher to ensure each member receives access to the journal. Contact information will be accessed when responding to an email inquiry.
• To third-party service providers who maintain the association website, provide abstract management services, and assist with elections and scheduling.
• To complete a purchase for any product offered by a third-party provider. 
• To protect against potential fraud, personal and credit card information is verified through a third-party credit card processor.
• To comply with applicable laws or to comply with lawful requests or court orders and legal process, including responding to requests from public and government authorities to meet national security or law enforcement requirements.  
• To enforce our Privacy Policy, and to protect our rights, privacy, safety or property, and/or that of you or others.
• To perform other society related functions, such as abstract submissions, award consideration, and meetings registration.

We require third party vendors to verify that they do not use the contact information for any other purpose than to provide the administrative services outlined in their service contract.

Demographic Information

Demographic data will be available to the Executive Director and Executive Board of SMT and will be de-identified and only reported anonymously.

Others may request aggregate demographic data from the Executive Director, which will be provided anonymously. For example, upon request the Executive Director may provide anonymous data to:

• The Committee on the Status of Women, Committee on Race and Ethnicity, Queer Resource Interest Group, Accessibility Committee, and other groups in order for them to pursue their missions, (e.g., the College Music Society, the American Musicological Society, Society for Ethnomusicology, or the Society for American Music, as needed for comparative demographic studies.)

• The Chair of Publications in order to assess and inform efforts to improve inclusivity and equity in our publications.

Anonymous Data

When we use the term "anonymous data," we are referring to data and information that doesn’t permit you to be individually identified, either alone or when combined with any other information available to a third party.

We may create anonymous data from the personal and demographic data we receive about you and other individuals whose personal data we collect. Anonymous data might include analytics information and information collected by us using cookies, as well as information you provide when becoming a member. We make personal and demographic data into anonymous data by excluding information, such as your name, IP address, and email address, that makes the data personally identifiable to you. We use this anonymous data to analyze patterns in order to make improvements to our society.

Forms and Public Posting Areas

Please note that any information you include in a message posted in a forum or other public posting area is available to anyone who visits the website. Please be very careful when deciding to post publicly identifiable information, such as email address, in any public forums.

Website Security

The Society for Music Theory uses website security measures consistent with current best practices to protect its website, email and mailing lists. These measures include technical, procedural, monitoring, and tracking intended to safeguard data from unauthorized access, loss, or misuse.

Credit card information is transmitted using secure socket layer (SSL) encryption. The Society for Music Theory does not store or retain credit card information about our clients. However, our service providers may store such information on their sites. Information about how your credit card or other financial information is stored can be found on those sites.

Should any indication of misuse occur, the society will move quickly to isolate the problem and restore functionality. The society will notify the relevant authorities of any incident of misuse. In the event of a data breach, we will notify affected subjects in accordance with law and best practices in a timely manner.

Contact Us

Thank you for reviewing our Privacy Policy. We welcome your comments or questions about this Privacy Policy. If you have any feedback, we encourage you to contact the Executive Director of the Society for Music Theory, Jennifer Diaz, at societymusictheory@gmail.com.

We will post any modifications or changes to the Policy on our website. We reserve the right to modify the Policy at any time. If we make any material changes to the Policy, we will post a notice on our Site prior to those changes taking effect. For Society for Music Theory members, we will notify you of any changes to our privacy policy or the way we use or share your information via email notification prior to making those changes. Upon registering for the annual conference, becoming a member, or renewing a membership, you will be encouraged to review the privacy policy, including any changes to it.