A Blog from Saunie

Dear Colleagues,

The Columbus Dispatch, my hometown newspaper, has been running a series of ”exposes” about how the colleges and universities in the state address questions regarding release of certain information. Mostly the questions involved athletes and involved travel info and job info. The responses were all over the place, with most institutions who refused to give up the information citing to FERPA. Some of the institutions provided the information saying it was a public record. This has set off quite a firestorm regarding “what constitutes a record” under FERPA.

Our state senator is calling for clarification and our state Attorney General is sending requests for clarification to the Dept. of Ed. But this issue is also receiving national attention, bolstered by the involvement of former Senator James Buckley, the original drafter of the legislation.

The new head of the Family Compliance Office, Paul Gammill, stated that he intends to meet with the NCAA reps to discuss better transparency in records, but what is badly needed is a comprehensive review of the law, the legislative intent and the application to practice.

The only time a federal court of appeals evaluated what constituted a “record” under FERPA was in 2002 when the Sixth Circuit ruled that student discipline records constitute a “record” under FERPA. The court stated that since the regs specify exceptions to FERPA, if a record was NOT identified as an exception, then it would be encompassed by the privacy provisions of the law.

So, do we look forward to greater specificity in the language of the law imposed by the Dept. of Ed., or to continued interpretative discretion on the part of the institutions?

Have a great weekend.

Saunie Schuster