Monday, June 27, 2005
After offering more than 100 apologies, the University of Kansas Office of Student Financial Aid finalized its agenda to rectify its e-mail mishap.
On June 20 the office violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act when it sent out a mass e-mail that shared students’ financial and scholastic information.
Sharing this information is a violation of the Buckley Amendment to the Higher Education Act found in FERPA, said Ted Frederickson, journalism professor who teaches a class on the First Amendment. The Act protects the privacy of students’ records.
The e-mail, sent to 119 students receiving financial aid, included everyone’s name within the e-mail address list. The office was supposed to send out individual e-mails to these students, alerting them that because of their failing grades they were at risk of losing their financial aid.
Instead, the office sent out one e-mail, which allowed the students to view the names of the other recepients.
Employees at the office realized their mistake on June 21 and sent the students an apologetic e-mail assuring them that actions would be taken to prevent any similar incidents.
Todd Cohen, associate director of University Relations, said the office would review its e-mail notification policy, work with the general counsel’s office to update the policy and provide additional e-mail training for staff.
Frederickson said affected students could file lawsuits but advised against doing so. Frederickson said pressing charges would would hurt the student as well as the University.
“You would only compound the harm to yourself by telling more people,” Frederickson said. “Why make more publicity about something that isn’t good in the first place?”
Frederickson said the information was inadvertently released and that no one was trying to hurt those students. He said he could see how it happened but was confident another incident would not occur.
Besides reviewing and updating its e-mail policy, the office has another option to ensure against another slip-up. The office could seek outside assistance from Proofpoint. Proofpoint is an online security vendor that protects enterprises against unwanted e-mails and viruses and guarantees outgoing mail is compliant with the enterprise’s policies.
Proofpoint, which works with universities such as Princeton and Brown, offers Machine Learning Technology. Besides blocking spam and viruses, MLX can assure compliancy with FERPA. Once programmed, it can make sure an incident like the one that took place on June 20 never happens again, said Keith Crosley, director of market development for Proofpoint.
MLX can do so by pinpointing and stopping outgoing mail that does not meet with policy. MLX would have quarantined that e-mail because it had more than 10 recipients in the correspondence line, Crosley said.
Crosley said Proofpoint had made contact with the University but could not reveal specifics. Cohen said he was unaware of any contact.
— Edited by Erin M. Droste
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