Cmte.: U. should notify parents of 'serious' abuses

The recommendation would allow notification for major or frequent offenses. Parents of students involved in "frequent or serious" alcohol-related incidents that endanger themselves or others or result in property damage could be notified of their child's actions, according to a proposed new policy released yesterday by a University committee studying the issue. The recommendations are not intended to address alcohol-related hospitalizations, instead focusing only on incidents which lead to disciplinary action from the Office of Student Conduct. The University will maintain its policy of only notifying parents of students whose health is seriously endangered by their alcohol use and most hospital visits will not require any sort of notification. The policy does not call for any automatic notification. Instead, Office of Student Conduct Director Michele Goldfarb and her office would be able to use their discretion and make individual decisions for each case. The recommendations have been presented to University President Judith Rodin and Provost Robert Barchi. Rodin said she was "looking forward to the input of the campus community" and would make a final policy decision on October 15, the last day of the campus-wide consultation period. As part of that consultation, the Undergraduate Assembly will hold an open forum tomorrow at 6 p.m. in Logan Hall for students to discuss the issue with administrators. The committee, chaired by College of Arts and Sciences Dean Richard Beeman, was charged last year after Congress passed the Buckley Amendment to the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act in October 1998. That law reversed earlier regulations barring schools from notifying parents of students who are in violation of their respective school's drug and alcohol policies. Now, school administrators can make their own decision on which circumstances they feel warrant notification. The committee's report spells out the "specified circumstances" in which parents should be contacted. As had been the case before, a minor alcohol infraction will not warrant parental notification. Beeman said the recommendations reflected the committee's desire to treat students as adults who are capable of making intelligent decisions. "The University of Pennsylvania does not wish in any way, shape or form to rush back into the state of in loco parentis," Beeman said, referring to the era when colleges and universities assumed parental responsibility for their students. In addition, the committee recommended that the University further consider developing a voluntary "consent to be notified" form, which would be signed by both students and parents and would provide parental notification for violations not specifically mentioned in the recommendations. Citations for underage alcohol possession is one such example. Beeman stressed that notification is not meant as a punitive measure. "We said consistently, 'We do not want parental notification to be coupled with punishment,'" Beeman said. "It's a challenge to unlink those two." Administrators will try to contact in advance those students whose parents are to be notified so that the student may "initiate parental contact." The committee recommended that the OSC be responsible for gauging when and in what circumstances parents should be notified. "This is not meant to address all of the problems of alcohol abuse. It's only one small piece of a much bigger policy," said Goldfarb, who is also a member of the committee. Goldfarb estimated that, in the past year, about 30 students had been involved in alcohol-related incidents that, under the proposed new rules, would be serious enough to merit possible parental involvement. The committee had been meeting since early in the spring semester -- a week before before the alcohol-related death of 1994 College graduate Michael Tobin brought alcohol to the forefront of campus debate -- and has since been discussing the issue of parental notification with other universities and eliciting opinion from different campus and parent groups. Drug and Alcohol Resource Team Advisor Kate Ward-Gaus said she had contacted other peer institutions to see whether -- and in what way -- they were complying with the amendment. "There was the end of the continuum that said, "Let's keep the status quo,'" Ward-Gaus said. "Some institutions moved a little bit quicker," she said, using as an example the University of Delaware, which has begun notifying parents after the first offense.