Students discuss notification policy at UA forum

Since Congress clarified the law, several schools have created tougher policies. College students have traditionally gone off to school thinking their days of notes home to parents or calls from the principal's office are over. But the recent law passed by Congress giving universities the ability to make their own policies regarding parental notification for alcohol violations has schools across the country doing just that, and they are deciding to exercise this new power in a variety of ways. Penn's proposed policy of notifying parents when students are involved in "repeated or serious" alcohol-related incidents that require disciplinary action falls in the middle of the spectrum of the growing list of policies, which range from no notification at all to automatically notifying parents of the slightest violation. The amendment to the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act in October 1998 clarified an earlier law by stating explicitly that universities may notify parents. Formerly, the law had been interpreted by many schools as prohibiting them from notifying parents about alcohol-related incidents. One of the strictest of all the new notification policies was instituted in 1997 at the University of Delaware. Implemented even before the recent legislation, the policy states that an automatic letter of notification is sent to the parents of any student under 21 who is found guilty of violating the school's alcohol regulations. Additionally, Delaware's "three strikes and you're out" policy mandates that on the third violation, students are kicked out of their residential housing and possibly expelled from the university. According to Tracy Bachman, a research associate at the Center for Drug and Alcohol Research at Delaware, on the first violation students are fined $50, put on probation and must take a mandatory alcohol education course in addition to the notification letter. On the second offense, students receive a $100 fine, additional counseling and another letter home to parents. The policy seems to be successful so far, Bachman said, as statistics from the dean of student affairs show that since the policy was first implemented, first offenses have increased but repeat offenses have decreased. The University of Virginia has also become stricter in notifying parents. Before the new law was passed, Virginia had notified parents only in the most severe cases, according to Associate Dean of Students Shamim Sisson. That policy has since been expanded. In a letter sent to parents in August, Virginia President John Casteen outlined the university's new policies. "In the past, our policy has been to address alcohol abuse by working with students to solve problems," Casteen wrote. "We will continue this policy, but we also will use the clarified authority in the new law when the deans see good reasons to do so." Virginia's new policy involves two major components, Sisson said. Parents automatically receive written notification if their student is arrested for an alcohol-related incident, if the dean's office deems there to be an ongoing pattern of offenses or if the severity of an offense requires notification. In every case, however, the student is first encouraged to contact his or her parents. "[Our intent to notify is] done with the full knowledge of the students and the full involvement of the student," Sisson said. Boston University has not changed its policy at all because it always interpreted federal regulations to say that they could notify parents of any violation, according to BU spokesperson Colin Riley. "[We have] always called parents and we will continue to do so," Riley said. A decision is made to notify parents when a student is called into the dean of student's office for a violation of the code of student responsibility, which includes alcohol, according to Riley. BU feels an "obligation to keep [parents] informed" of the behavior of their student, "particularly when they're all financially responsible or dependent," Riley added. Other schools have less elaborate notification policies and not all changed their existing ones in response to the new legislation. Brown University has no automatic notification policy specifically for alcohol incidents, although parental notification can be part of a penalty after a disciplinary hearing, a policy that has not changed, according to spokesperson Mark Nickel. And at Stanford University, officials will contact parents if they feel the student "is unwilling or unable to care for himself or herself" or where "students are exhibiting extremely poor judgment," according to the school's World Wide Web site. "We've always tried to embrace parents as part of the student education experience," said Troy Gilbert, Stanford's assistant to the vice provost for student affairs. Still, though, some schools -- such as Cornell University -- have no policy at all, although Cornell is currently in the process of considering their range of options, according to Dean of Students John L. Ford.