Enrollment Management Electronic Newsletter

A FERPA Moment: Students with Confidential Status

Occasionally in RAIL or in Banner, you will access a student's record and see a message that the information is *Confidential*. What does this mean? What can I say (or not) and to whom?

At Shepherd University the following information (Directory Information) about a student can, by law, be released to the general public:

Name, address, e-mail address, telephone listing, date and place of birth, major field of study, participation in officially recognized activities and sports, weight and height of members of athletics teams, dates of attendance, degrees and awards received, and most recent previous educational agency or institution attended.

These data elements are not generally considered invasions of privacy by the Department of Education or by the institution, and do not require the written consent of the student to release or discuss with someone other than the student or outside the institution. However, students may elect (through a form available in our office) a higher level of confidentiality, such that even these data elements must be approved in writing by the student before release to someone other than the student or outside the institution.

Students who file the form have a special code entered in the student system, which creates alert messages like this one in RAIL:

If you see this alert in RAIL, be aware of some of the limitations this level of confidentiality has placed on us. In fact, we counsel the students: "Some of the effects of your decision to request confidential status will be that you must make all address changes with a signed authorization or in person with a form of ID; friends or relatives trying to reach you will not be able to do so through the University; information that you are a student here will be suppressed, so that if a loan company, prospective employer, family member, etc., inquire about you, they will be informed that we can neither confirm nor deny your attendance here."

Most of your regular conversations--directly with the student, or with other Shepherd personnel who have the direct need to know this information in order to do their work--will not change. But it certainly adds a strong level of caution to conversations with individuals outside Shepherd. In those cases, please feel free to refer them to our office to have that conversation! And let us know if you have questions about this or other privacy-related issue.

Student information is sensitive--handle with care!!

http://www.shepherd.edu/register/