Editorial: Respect students’ privacy

Friday, April 12, 2002 | 4:37 a.m.

If your mailbox is crammed with credit-card and other types of solicitations, and telemarketers are forever ringing your home phone, it's because companies you did business with sold your private records to mass-marketing firms. Anyone who buys anything these days, particularly when using plastic cards, may have his privacy violated this way. But how about students buying an education from state colleges and universities?

This past December the Las Vegas Sun disclosed that the University of Nevada, Las Vegas, the University of Nevada, Reno, and the Community College of Southern Nevada, unbeknownst to regents, were selling student lists to credit card companies. The schools made money -- UNLV, for example, was raking in $100,000 a year -- by receiving a percentage whenever a student or parent charged something on a card acquired through the program.

Last month the Board of Regents decided that information about name selling will now be contained within the first five pages of course catalogs, instead of being buried in the back pages. Students always had the opportunity to opt out, but the new policy makes them more aware of their right. That's the logic.

UNR was quick to announce that, well, OK, anyone who opts out won't get their names published on honor rolls, graduation rosters, and academic society membership lists either. That absurdity quickly ended after students protested to administrators. But an absurdity remains, that being the requirement for students to go out of their way to opt out of an activity that should be prohibited.

The correct policy would be one that states the university system will not sell any names to anybody. Period.