College disciplinary records are where the rubber meets the road for student privacy law. They are the confidential records that journalists most want -- and that colleges most want to withhold.While journalists have very little need for grades, attendance sheets and other academic records, they often are legitimately interested in how campus judicial bodies do (or don't) mete out punishment for disciplinary infractions.
Tag: campus crime
If they drive like police and shoot like police and arrest like police … they’re probably police
By law, Notre Dame University police enjoy the same authority as officers working for the City of Indianapolis or anywhere else in Indiana.
New guidelines may provoke confusion as Clery Act marks its 20th
Jeanne Clery lost her life in April 1986, but there is no telling how many lives have been saved since then due to her family's tireless work to make sure that college students have adequate warning of campus safety threats.The Jeanne Clery Act took effect twenty year ago (November 8, 1990), an enduring memorial to the 19-year-old Lehigh University student who was murdered in her dorm room by a fellow student.
Do campus crime numbers add up? You do the math.
In college newsrooms across the country, October is circled on the calendar -- or if not, it should be -- as time to update the campus on the past year's crime statistics.Thanks to the federal Jeanne Clery Act, all colleges receiving federal aid (private as well as public) must disclose each Oct.
Maryland AG: Colleges can’t use FERPA to conceal discipline of sexual assaults
It's understandable when colleges use their confidential in-house disciplinary systems to afford a "do-over" to a student who violates a campus rule (say, yelling profanities at a professor) or commits a minor, victimless offense (say, sneaking a six-pack into the dorm). Such behavior would never result in a criminal charge if it happened at an off-campus apartment, and it seems inequitable to inflict a permanent scar on a young person's record because he happens to live in Ivy Hall instead of Ivy Apartments.But if this much is true, then the converse also is true, and it is likewise inequitable to give a free pass to a person accused of a violent offense carrying potential felony charges just because the offender was "lucky" enough to attack someone on campus.Campus disciplinary bodies operate almost entirely in secret, thanks to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act ("FERPA"), the federal confidentiality law that protects against disclosure of students' educational records.
CPI investigation’s findings heighten urgency of FERPA reform
Victims of sexual assault on campus often feel pressured to divert their cases away from the criminal justice system and into the secretive world of campus disciplinary bodies, frequently producing unsatisfying outcomes, according to a newly published study by the Center for Public Integrity, a nonprofit investigative journalism consortium.The public often is surprised to learn that campus disciplinary boards -- made up of non-lawyer school employees and rarely bound by court-like rules of evidence or burdens of proof -- are adjudicating cases that would be felonies if handled by off-campus authorities.
New Tenn. law requires campus crime disclosure
The law, co-sponsored by state Sen. Tim Burchett, R-Knoxville, and state Rep. Harry Brooks, R-Knoxville, amends the Tennessee Open Records Act to force public colleges and universities to disclose three categories of student disciplinary records.
How to gain access to private university police records
If you are a student journalist at a private college or university and want access to campus police records beyond basic log information, you must first determine if the campus police have law enforcement authority. If so, the campus police might be subject to your state’s open-records law. Each state’s open-records law is different, so you must research the relationship between your campus police and state law.
House discusses pros, cons of open campus crime logs
A House of Representatives subcommittee heard over two hours of "eye-opening" and sometimes emotional testimony about campus crime in early June from a series of eight panelists, including school administrators, victims of campus crime, a professional journalist and a Department of Education official.