Universities Grapple with Federal Requests

In the weeks following the attacks, federal and local authorities asked for information about foreign students from over two hundred colleges and universities. In almost all cases, they received it without question, according to a survey conducted by the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Only about 5 percent of the institutions told those students about whom information had been requested. At about one hundred institutions, the information solicited included items usually kept confidential, such as the courses students were taking, their grades, and their financial data.

In November federal officials announced that they would take the additional step of interviewing 5,000 young Middle Eastern men, many of them students, who were in the United States on temporary visas and who were not suspects in the attacks. Civil rights groups and Arab American organizations criticized the interview plan, which called for officials to ask the men about such matters as their acquaintances, their movements in the United States, and their emotional reactions to the September 11 attacks.

Some interviewees have said publicly that they were distressed by the questioning, which is now complete; others commented that it was difficult to see how the pro forma interviews could yield any useful information. Federal agents initiated some interviews by showing up unannounced on students’ doorsteps; other students received letters asking them to schedule interviews at their convenience. Investigators asked both local police departments and universities in a number of states to help set up or conduct the interviews. According to the Chronicle of Higher Education, several public universities in Michigan declined, saying that their participation was not vital to the effort and might damage relationships with students.

Colleges and universities are also coming to terms with a sweeping antiterrorism law passed in October, the USA Patriot Act. The law contains provisions giving federal authorities greater power to investigate electronic communications, a provision that may require institutions to turn over confidential student records to federal agents, and one that may prohibit them from disclosing that such records have been sought. The law is complex, and some universities remain largely unaware of its ramifications, while others, such as Cornell University, have drafted policies dealing with it. It could affect universities not only if government requests for information, such as library records, conflict with universities’ usual confidentiality policies, but also if law enforcement agencies are themselves confused by the law and make requests that are not legally valid. Cornell’s policy outlines a specific procedure for processing requests for information. "We don’t want our staff and thus the institution to violate the privacy of our constituents in response to an invalid request," Cornell’s vice president for information technologies told the Chronicle of Higher Education.

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