Walking a fine line between student privacy laws and campus safety is a perpetual balancing act for members of the University of Wisconsin Threat Assessment and Response Team.
Created Sept. 1, 2007, in the wake of the Virginia Tech shooting where a student gunman killed 32 people before taking his own life, the team brings together information and individuals from across campus in hopes of preventing a similar incident at UW, said UW Police Chief Sue Riseling.
“All we’re doing is trying to bring the dots together so we can intervene,” Riseling said.
The team is officially charged with assessing and responding to situations where a student, faculty member, staff member or visitor poses a threat to themselves or other individuals, according to the 2009-2010 UW Campus Safety Guide.
To this end, however, the group often finds itself operating in an interpretive grey area when deciding to release student records under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, said Kevin Helmkamp, associate dean of students and co-chair of the team.
“It’s a tightrope walk,” he said. “Since we started, it’s very much living in the world of damned if I do and damned if I don’t.”
FERPA has historically deterred university administrators and faculty from releasing information about students who may pose a threat to campus safety, Helmkamp said.
Such hesitancy, however, was shown in a new light following the Virginia Tech tragedy, said Nancy Lynch, senior UW legal counsel and member of the team.
The investigative and debriefing reports of the Virginia Tech situation revealed perceptions that FERPA was a barrier to exchanging vital information to keep campuses safe, Lynch said.
“The U.S. Departments of Education and Health and Human Services should consider whether further actions are needed to balance more appropriately the interests of safety, privacy and treatment implicated by FERPA,” said a Report to the President on Issues Raised by the Virginia Tech Tragedy, which wasjointly submitted by the U.S. Secretary of Education, Secretary of Health and Human Services and the Attorney General in June 2007.
In a direct response to this report, the Department of Education issued new rules regarding FERPA in December 2008, granting universities more deference in determining when and with whom to share student records in an emergency situation, Lynch said.
Campus officials can now release student records to anyone necessary to alleviate the situation as long as there is an “articulable and significant threat,” according to the Code of Federal Regulations.
Despite these loosened standards, Helmkamp said the team’s job is still “very much an art, not a science,” and requires difficult judgment calls, especially when deciding to release student records.
“We have our things that we tend to look for, but in all honesty, someone could have a concern under almost every category and not be a threat. Somebody else could have almost no concerns and be a threat. That’s the nature of the work,” Helmkamp said.
Riseling referenced a particular case brought to the team’s attention last year where a student in the dorms was found multiple times “carving his carpet” with a large knife. He had also stopped talking with his roommates. It was deemed prudent to release the student’s records to those who needed to know to alleviate the concern, Riseling said.
While making such judgments often requires a careful balancing act between safety and student’s privacy rights, Helmkamp and Lynch agree the focus of the team is first and foremost keeping people on campus safe.
“Sometimes we probably stumble in our efforts to do that, but I believe we stumble with the best of intentions,” Helmkamp said.
In three years, the team has addressed more than 100 cases where someone was deemed a potential serious threat to themselves or others, meriting an intervention from the team.
