Regents delay vote on privacy issue

Jennifer Knight

Friday, Jan. 25, 2002 | 11:02 a.m.

The state Board of Regents today decided to delay a vote on whether the university system should stop the practice of releasing private information about students to credit card companies.

Regents will examine the issue during their March meeting.

If the vote scheduled for this morning had passed, it also would have ended the practice of releasing the information to any agency outside the college.

Regent Howard Rosenberg said he would prefer a policy that would prohibit the release of information to credit card companies, but regents were not clear as to what information would be released to which companies.

"This makes me really uncomfortable, releasing any information, but particularly to credit card companies," he said.

Jane Nichols, chancellor of the University and Community College System of Nevada, suggested the delay saying that halting the disclosure of all student information could result in unintended consequences. For example, if students decline to release their names they would not receive information on scholarships distributed by private foundations and would not be solicited for membership in honors societies.

The 11-member board had three choices -- allow the release of student names and addresses to continue, eliminate the practice or curtail it.

According to the proposed revision, the three institutions that brokered profitable deals with credit card companies would no longer be able to release or sell those names and addresses to any outside party. Credit card marketers also could not set up kiosks on campus to offer free gifts to students who sign up for credit cards.

Under federal rules, universities and colleges are allowed to distribute certain information on students, barring grades and other details, as long as they are notified.

The Community College of Southern Nevada, the University of Nevada, Las Vegas and University of Nevada, Reno say they do notify students of their rights.

The ACLU, however, said the practice was a subversive form of consent because the notices, placed in the back of the college catalog, were difficult to find.