They don't need to distance from anything, as noted, it was never part of any policy, it was a discussion-piece / list of suggestions within a single department
To disavow such discussions would be to disavow free speech and expression.
And even if it was a suggested form of "policing", Free speech does not become stronger by obsessing about shaming and ostracizing those who disagree with its concepts.
It's a strange premise that a department should operate in complete autonomy from its parent institution. Is that your mental model of all departments at Stanford? That they can do, say, and publish arbitrarily, and any action on the institution side is a disavowment of free speech?
the premise is that a couple of people (more accurately, the CIO council) in the IT department said "I think future changes to the site should consider these points". And academia generally does have websites per department.
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Realistically, almost anyone at any university can put content onto university websites / servers. This isn't some crazy notion of website usage: the same applies to this very site too.
To disavow such discussions would be to disavow free speech and expression.
And even if it was a suggested form of "policing", Free speech does not become stronger by obsessing about shaming and ostracizing those who disagree with its concepts.