To the Editor:

College students should be aware that secret records may be maintained about them in spite of the intent of the Federal Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) to protect them from such abuse by administrators.

After the 2008 shooting at Northern Illinois University, the Campus Security Enhancement Act was passed, requiring each higher education institution in Illinois to form a campus violence prevention plan and campus threat assessment teams. NIU calls theirs the Student Threat Assessment Team (STAT) and its manual mentions a database used for recording cases.

The STAT is not widely publicized on the NIU website, the manual is not available there, and the Faculty Senate minutes even show one administrator claiming it’s important that we not necessarily have lots of conversations with students about the fact that theres a Student Threat Assessment Team.

Three other public universities have limited information about their threat assessment teams on their website: Southern Illinois University – Carbondale, University of Illinois – Springfield, and Western Illinois University.

How can a student request access to their records if they are unaware they exist? If they make a request for all of their education records it would hopefully be included in the response. When I tried that, however, general counsel denied that such a broad request can be filled.

I suspected the STAT database would have records on me and requested them. What I received back shows that STAT was compiling information about me, including my veteran medical records and whether I possessed a FOID card. These records also mention the lawsuit I filed against the student association and a complaint I submitted to the Office of Civil Rights.

Neither of those are threatening or concerning behaviors and are entirely acceptable actions within the legal system to protect my rights. Some records are as accurate as rumors, so I worry how they might affect future decisions against me.

There’s a legitimate interest in threat assessment, and determining whether a potentially threatening student has a FOID card is probably appropriate. Obtaining access to medical records might also be, but that seems like a gray area. However, there appears to be little control over what information is available to threat assessment teams and providing it only on a need-to-know basis, or on how to redress any unwarranted invasions of privacy.

I believe there should be significant review of these plans by student and privacy advocates.

Sid Kincaid

NIU Grad Student in Computational Mathematics

DeKalb