Legal News

FERPA: A Law Grows in Columbus . . . And at a College Town Near You

By Chris Herring

It’s common to see college websites regularly brimming with press releases about accomplishments both academic and athletic, as university officials consistently work to churn out news they want publicized.

But according to “Secrecy 101,” a two-part series in the Columbus Dispatch, officials at many schools are working just as hard to keep information from the public.

Specifically, the series argues, colleges around the country are intentionally twisting the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a law passed in 1974 largely designed to keep students’ grades private. According to the Dispatch stories, schools are instead using the law to hide information that could hurt the integrity of the schools and their athletic programs. (Click here for the first part of the series, which discusses Ohio State University’s efforts to use FERPA as a shield. The second, here, takes more of a nationwide look at a handful of other schools.)

The report says several schools withheld or blacked out information in documents, much of which had little or nothing to do with academic records. Examples: what summer jobs the students athletes took, the names of season ticket holders and team flight information. In one case, the report said, Ohio State cited FERPA when it blacked out an article that was previously published in the Dispatch — even though the article (and the newspaper it was in) was sent to more than 250,000 home subscribers.

“Those examples provide no harm to the kids,” said former U.S. senator James Buckley, the author of the legislation. Buckley told the Dispatch that Congress needs to stop schools from hiding behind FERPA.

Ohio State Registrar Brad Myers said that, based on his interpretation of FERPA, revealing names of rule-breaking students is “an invasion of privacy.” Part of the reason the schools claim to be so cautious, it seems, is because divulging a name could lead to a loss of certain federal funding.

This isn’t the first time the spotlight’s been shone on FERPA. The University of Maryland’s student paper filed a lawsuit in 1996 when the school refused to divulge information, citing FERPA, on how many parking tickets had been given to athletes and coaches. The school ended up taking the issue to Maryland’s high court, only to lose and be told that the records weren’t related to FERPA.

More recently, FERPA came up in the wake of the 2007 Virginia Tech shooting. Critics argued that Virginia Tech officials should have been more forthcoming about shooter Seung-Hui Cho, who had a history of mental illness and had spoken of his destructive thoughts with Va. Tech counselors. Two panels, one conducted by the state of Virginia and the other by the Health and Human Services Department, concluded that Virginia Tech did not intervene effectively. Both reports said concerns with violating FERPA likely played a role.

Full post as published by Law Blog - WSJ.com on June 03, 2009 (boomark / email).