A new law about to take effect in Virginia requires colleges to turn over to police personal information on all students accepted at their schools to verify that they are not sex offenders.
Beginning July 1, private and public colleges will berequired to electronically transmit the personal data — names, Social Security numbers, birth dates and genders of students — to state police, who will check the information against state and national sex offender lists.
Though sex offenders will not be automatically barred from admittance, police will monitor those students who do enroll to ensure that a change of address card is filed with the state within the mandatory three-day limit.
With rising concerns of identity theft and the misuse of personal data, some have expressed concern about the possible violation of students’ rights to privacy.
“This law may not technically violate federal law, but it certainly violates the spirit of federal law intended to maintain student privacy rights,” said Kent Willis, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union in Virginia.
School officials maintain the information will be protected.
“Everything we have on students is kept on secure servers that have no way of being accessed by outside parties,” said Andy Perrine, spokesman for James Madison University. “We take student privacy pretty seriously.”
Teresa Mannix, director of news and information services at the University of Mary Washington, agrees.
“We always care about the safety of our students,” she said. “We don’t give out any information that we don’t need to.”
Both universities are looking into how the new requirements will affect the admissions process, though Mannix does not believe it will have a major impact on the current process.
The information needed to comply with the law has always been collected.
Virginia authorities plan to have guidelines in place at most universities prior to the start of the fall semester.
Information from The Associated Press was used in this report.
