Editorial
Arizona Daily Wildcat
May 1, 1998

Privacy with safety

In the month-and-a-half since the mishandling of student and employee information turned the CatCard identification project into something resembling chaos, conversations about privacy have abounded on campus.

These conversations have lead to the creation of both a UA Privacy Committee and an Information Security Council to address community concerns on the confidentiality of the records the university keeps.

Since 1974's federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, universities have had an obligation to keep "personally identifiable" information about students confidential.

This is the law university officials admitted they violated in releasing student Social Security numbers to Saguaro Credit Union and MCI Telecommunications Corp.

This law has been at the center of a continuing national debate over the nature of educational records and how the confidentiality of those records pertains to campus safety.

In 1990, in response to the murder of Jessica Clery, a student at Pennsylvania's Lehigh University, where Peter Likins was then president, Congress passed another law, known as the "Clery Bill." The Clery law requires colleges to disclose their security policies and annual statistics of all violent crime on campus.

There is a philosophical conflict between the two laws that goes to the very heart of how a university treats the records of its students. And, as the campus continues to talk about privacy, the conflict is an important one to keep in mind. Flaws in the system are being lost in the reaction to the release of Social Security numbers by the UA.

The way FERPA is currently interpreted at the university, once the Dean of Students Office becomes involved in any campus disciplinary situation, the matter becomes an educational record, sealed from the public.

As Associate Dean of Students Alexis Hernandez said in October, "Once we're looking at a case then we can't talk about it at all. We can't even verify that we're looking into it."

That interpretation means that, practically, student judiciary proceedings in cases as severe as rape and assault are kept confidential and justice is administered behind closed doors.

In court cases in Georgia and Ohio, this idea of hidden justice has come under fire.

As the UA looks at privacy on this campus, the time has come for a student-driven discussion on the relationship between educational records and safety.

The current system is too suspect, too star-chambered, both here and on campuses around the country, to survive. Eventually, an event like Jessica Clery's murder will happen and cause a panicked reevaluation of student justice. Students have an opportunity right now to begin the state and national push to ensure that their campuses remain as safe as their grades should be.

How can reasonable people assume that justice is ever done when one can never know whether students or organizations violate the law, from providing alcohol to minors to rape?

Criminals should not be allowed to hide behind a law meant to protect educational records. What does that teach?