The march to turn college students back into children continues throughout the United States. We can die in Iraq, fight in Afghanistan and vote to elect the President of the United States - we cannot, however, control who sees our personal information and records.
Just this past December, the U.S. Department of Education changed a passage in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, making it easier to share college students' personal records with parents, police or anyone else interested in seeing them. Previously, a student's information could only be disclosed if an administrator thought a student posed an "imminent threat."
Now the language has been changed to "significant and articulable," effectively neutering the provision completely. This change - seemingly innocuous - will have major consequences. The specific adjective "imminent" was used to discourage administrators from using this provision unless all other options had been exhausted. And it worked - college administrators were so skittish about FERPA laws that they rarely dared test the law's reach. This change bodes ill for the future of student privacy.
Many see the change as the federal government's answer to the 2007 Virginia Tech tragedy. Many believed that looser regulations on student information would have prompted some of the gunmen's professors to intervene sooner and avert the ensuing disaster. But according to FERPA, professors and other college staff are already legally able to share their concerns over a student's temperament.
Professors at Virginia Tech could have alerted the proper officials, including campus police, to Seung-Hui Cho's troublesome writings and dangerous personality - they chose not to. Bad choices are made all the time, attempting to legislate them out of existence is futile.
College students should be treated their age. They are educated, soon-to-be independent young men and women who deserve the right to privacy and the federal protection such a right demands. As in any demographic there are those among us who are unstable and dangerous and as these situations are treated in the rest of society, so they should be treated here. Professors, college administrators and college students should be wary of the people around them and the possible danger an unhinged classmate could pose. Denigrating the rights of the many to possibly protect the few is not a good maxim to follow.
Encouraging administrators to share student information is not the best way to protect students or professors. It is not the best way to ensure that students who need help will get help. It is only a way to further invade the privacy of people who are near- or full-grown adults. If the federal government is so worried about the safety of students, then it needs to specifically address the issue with focused legislation that does not abridge the rights of students. Better luck next time.
