Embargoed For Release
April 24, 2002, 8 a.m.
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Embargoed For Release |
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Washington, DC-Today the U.S. Supreme Court will hear oral arguments in a case, Gonzaga University v. Doe, that campus safety advocates say could make it more difficult to get information about crime on college and university campuses.
The Court will decide whether a Gonzaga graduate can sue the school for releasing information about sexual assault allegations against him which he argues should be kept confidential under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
“Allowing students to sue over the release of criminal allegations would have a chilling effect on the release of already scarce campus crime information that students need to protect themselves,” said S. Daniel Carter of Security On Campus, Inc. (SOC) a national non-profit watchdog organization. “Image conscious schools have routinely abused FERPA to keep campus crime hidden. A fear of lawsuits would make colleges and universities even more reluctant to release campus crime information and the Supreme Court shouldn't allow them.”
Most campus crime is student-on-student giving colleges the opportunity to divert allegations into student disciplinary proceedings rather than the criminal justice system. The schools then claim the proceedings are confidential under FERPA.
Critics of these disciplinary proceedings argue that the schools use these secret campus courts to keep the public from finding out about the true extent of campus crime and violence.
“When our son David was killed, our family experienced first hand how a university uses FERPA to prevent the victim, his family, and the community from learning the truth about a violent crime on campus,” said Debbie and Jeff Shick whose son David was killed in an alcohol fueled brawl on the campus of Georgetown University two years ago.
The student accused of striking the fatal blow went through Georgetown’s campus court, but the Shick family and the rest of the campus community were not told the results. “The cloak of secrecy that surrounds disciplinary hearings combined with non-disclosure policies allow a university to manipulate the process in order to preserve its reputation,” added the Shicks.
SOC, along with several journalism organizations, has filed a “friend of the court” brief in the Gonzaga case arguing that students shouldn't be allowed to use a federal civil rights law (42 USC 1983) to bring private lawsuits over individual FERPA violations.
Carter of SOC, and Debbie Shick will attend the oral arguments before the Court today, and be available afterwards outside the Court to answer questions.
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