U. amends its rules on notification

Parents will be told of student drug and alcohol offenses in fewer cases than had been recommended. A revised parental notification policy, released yesterday by top Penn administrators, calls for parents of students who have had "previous" and "significant" drug or alcohol-related violations to be notified by the University. Under the terms of the announcement, which comes after weeks of campus-wide debate surrounding a committee's proposal to notify parents of students involved in "frequent" or "serious" alcohol-related incidents, the University will also have the option of notifying parents of students whose alcohol-related misconduct leads to personal injury, property damage or expulsion from their college house. The new terms, which were altered from "serious" to "significant," lessen the probability that parents of students involved in alcohol-related incidents would be notified of their children's actions. University officials say they will determine what constitutes "significant" misconduct on a case-by-case basis. "What we don't want to do is lock anybody into a knee-jerk reaction," Provost Robert Barchi said. "What we're trying to do here is remove any concern that a trivial episode of alcohol abuse would necessarily trigger an action because of the way it was written." The original committee, chaired by College of Arts and Sciences Dean Richard Beeman, released its report late last month. It was charged last spring in response to federal legislation that permitted universities to notify parents of students who are found in violation of their school's drug and alcohol policies. The committee's recommendation to consider developing a voluntary "consent to be notified" form -- which would be signed by both students and their parents and would provide parental notification for lesser violations -- has been discarded and is not included in the final policy. Those students guilty of alcohol and drug-related misconduct will have the opportunity to contact their parents before University officials do so. Penn will maintain its policy of only notifying parents of students whose lives are seriously endangered by their alcohol use. As had been the case before, no student will be punished for coming to the emergency room and a visit to the ER itself will not automatically merit parental notification. "We've had several ER incidents this fall, none of which resulted in anything that was serious enough to trigger the usual parental notification," University President Judith Rodin said. "So just coming to the ER isn't the trigger. It really is the severity of the episode and the health risk to the student." In addition to cases that are "frequent" and "significant," as well as those that cause personal injury or property damage, parents could also be notified if their children are evicted from one of the 12 college houses. That situation, however, is "very rare" and only happened once last year for a controlled-substance case, according to Director of College Houses and Academic Services David Brownlee. "What we would expel students for would be a serious behavior that was destructive of property or harmful to others," Brownlee said. After Beeman's committee submitted its report, Rodin and Barchi received commentary from various constituencies of the Penn community, including students, parents, faculty members and Trustees. The Undergraduate Assembly held an open forum late last month, at which some students expressed their confusion about what kinds of behavior would and would not warrant parental notification. The UA largely supported the recommendations made by Beeman's committee, with the exception of the body's disapproval of the consent-to-be-notified form. Rodin said many of the parents with whom she had spoken were interested in more extensive parental notification policies. She said that she, as the mother of a son who is bound for college next year, would want to know "more than this policy provides me the options to know." But, she added, "We very strongly feel that our responsibility in this community is to expect and then support the mature behavior of our students." "If we come to feel that we can't have that expectation, then we may have more stringent regulations," Rodin said. "But we have high expectations for our students."

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