Senators sensitive about data sharing per dangerous students

Compliments of the Chronicle of Higher Ed:

October 23, 2007

Senate Calls for Clarity on Colleges' Sharing Data About Dangerous Students

Washington — The U.S. Senate has approved an amendment that would require the Education Department to provide college administrators with better guidance on how to identify and report students at risk of committing violence.

The amendment, which was adopted last night during debate on an education-spending bill for the 2008 fiscal year, was prompted by the April shootings at Virgina Tech, in which a student, Seung-Hui Cho, killed 32 people and himself.

After the tragedy, a federal panel issued a report recommending that the Department of Education update its guidance on privacy laws, so that colleges would know when they could share information on potentially dangerous students.

The amendment, if it is enacted into law, would instruct the department to provide colleges with new guidance within three months. —Kelly Field