If you work for someone else, they can do whatever they want with your communications on their devices.
I don't work at Berkeley but my guess is their system can do more than record emails which is extremely pervasive.
I agree with regard to companies, but I think it's a bit less clear for a university in general. Yes, the faculty and staff are clearly employees and so in a that sense it's reasonable to expect their internet usage will be monitored. But on the flip side, one of the historical aspects of universities is supposedly intellectual freedom. And in the sense that faculty might feel a chilling effect on their intellectual freedom if they know or suspect everything this type of monitoring, monitoring might be less acceptable.
When it comes to students, this argument is perhaps less clear. The students are not employees. Yes it's true they have all clicked "I Agree" to the university's network terms of service (but with all TOS's, how many of them actually read it?). But again, universities are ostensibly havens for intellectual freedom; what would pervasive monitoring do to that?
So, I think you are technically and legally correct, but I wonder if that justification is in the long-term best interests of universities as institutions of learning and exploration.
If I was a professor I'd want to work somewhere where I feel safe and secure because it's eerie having someone standing over your shoulders, let alone 24/7.
You mentioned intellectual freedom which is a feeling of security. I find that feeling misleading in the US with the NSA's new data center in Utah collecting our information.
Still it would be wise of Napolitano to reverse course but I think it's unlikely given her background.
Imagine the landlord of an apartment complex secretly collecting complete packet captures of the residents' network traffic.
Students have significantly reduced rights as they are not considered tenants so much as "members" of a university.
...in the US...
> they can do whatever they want with your communications on their devices.