In response to recent articles in The Eagle detailing the ruling by the Department of Education against Georgetown University's confidentiality policy in judicial proceedings, the Student Advocacy Center (SAC) would like to clarify how AU handles confidentiality in judicial matters as compared to Georgetown.
It is clear that colleges and universities should make every effort to protect the privacy of the students they serve. To its credit, Congress recognized the necessity of confidentiality of education records and passed the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) in 1974, which generally prohibits academic institutions from releasing an education record of a student to a third party without the student's written consent. Files pertaining to judicial proceedings fall under the auspices of education records, meaning a university could not disclose the findings of a judicial case to anyone other than the person charged in the case without the prior consent of that student.
However, there are several exceptions to FERPA that allow the disclosure of education records without the student's written consent. In 1998, FERPA was amended to allow academic institutions to divulge the final results of judicial hearings to victims of any "crime of violence" (i.e., arson, assault offenses, burglary, manslaughter by negligence, murder, destruction/damage/vandalism of property, kidnapping/abduction, robbery or forcible sex offenses) or nonforcible sex offenses.
Georgetown defended its refusal to share the findings of a recent sexual assault case because the victim would not sign a confidentiality agreement (The Eagle, 9/23). The Department of Education ruled against Georgetown, saying that Georgetown should release the information without a confidentiality agreement. While Georgetown followed the spirit of the law, it did not allow victims of "violent crimes" - like sexual assault - to learn of the sanctions imposed on their attackers, without a confidentiality agreement that preserved the privacy of the attacker.
AU does not require students to sign a confidentiality agreement in these cases and will notify the campus community when a threat to the community exists. If an AU student is the victim of sexual assault or any of the other "crimes of violence" listed above, that student will learn what the attacker was found responsible for and how the university punished the attacker.
Our purpose in writing this response is to clarify what we at SAC felt was a muddy explanation of how judicial confidentiality is practiced at AU. We feel that the current AU policy is an appropriate balance between protecting individual privacy and ensuring community safety. We ardently hope that Georgetown adopts a similar policy.
James Gardner is the director of AU's Student Advocacy Center.
