Editorial: Violating the privacy of students

Friday, Jan. 11, 2002 | 9:45 a.m.

Americans have a long history of fending off invasions of their privacy. One of the biggest concerns individuals have today involves companies that sell personal information about themselves to other companies and telemarketers. Most of Congress' scrutiny of this practice has centered on financial institutions that are swapping and selling addresses, Social Security numbers, and even medical records, to other companies. But this invasion of privacy isn't limited to just corporations -- institutions of higher education also are helping themselves to what can be a financial windfall.

The Sun's Jennifer Knight was the first to report on Dec. 26 that Nevada's two public universities and the Community College of Southern Nevada supply the names and addresses of their students to credit card companies. This is all done without first getting the consent of the students. The University of Nevada, Las Vegas nets a $100,000 profit annually from providing the mailing list of 47,000 alumni and students to MBNA, a Delaware-based credit card company; the University of Nevada, Reno receives about $58,000 a year from MBNA. The Community College of Southern Nevada receives $16,000 annually from First USA.

Technically, the universities do inform students that their names may be released to outsiders, but the information is buried so deep in course catalogs that it really is no notification at all. For instance, UNLV notifies students on page 88 of its class schedule about this practice, while CCSN does so on page 101 of its class schedule. The universities give a whole new definition to "fine print" in how they prevent students from being told that their personal information is sold to strangers.

The Board of Regents, which oversees the university system, is upset over the release of information. University system Chancellor Jane Nichols, after two weeks of controversy over the matter, said Wednesday that at the Board of Regents' Jan. 24-25 meeting she will recommend a halt to the selling of student information. The Board of Regents should end the universities' contracts with the credit card companies and prevent any other release of student information to outsiders unless a student's permission is obtained.