Faculty Senate: 'Provide temporary solution for IDs'

Moustafa Ayad
Daily Egyptian

The Faculty Senate passed a resolution earlier this week calling for a quick resolution to problems that have been plaguing some professors who have been unable or hesitant to display students' grades along with their Social Security numbers. Responding to a recent uproar from students who were against using their Social Security numbers on their ID cards, the senators said some other number must be available so they can post grades without violating students' privacy. Some students and professors were worried after a recent surge in identify theft cases that SIUC, which still use Social Security numbers on its ID cards, would be vulnerable. The University recently made available cards without Social Security numbers on them, but the numbers are still encoded into a strip on the card.

Senators asked the University to provide a unique identification number because Social Security numbers were no longer on class rosters. Some of the senators said posting grades with only the students' names attached presented a problem for class rosters with numbers as high as 230. Administrators on hand to hear the senate's resolution and some of the professors complaints with the way the University has been handling the problem said the system was being reworked and that it would take a lot of man hours and money to come to a fast solution.

Senators said they wanted some temporary solution that did not violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. The act is a privacy law that protects students from invasive practices used to access academic records. They also wanted to know if the University could have some random numbering system in place until a switch was made at a campus-wide level. Administrators said some legal issues were complicating a quick solution. Larry Dietz, vice chancellor for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management, was on hand at the senate's meeting Tuesday to answer some of the senator's questions. He said with a price tag of $7.5 million attached to a new identification system, the University would have to rework some of its budget. "We have a very shallow budget in the [Information Technology] system," Dietz said.

Dietz told the senate that two issues are at stake with the identification numbers. He said the system the University uses is terribly antiquated and that it was incredibly expensive to replace. Anne DeLuca, assistant vice chancellor for Student Affairs and Enrollment Management, is heading a team that is looking into the switch, but nothing will change until 2009 because that is when the current system would no longer receive technical support. Dietz said the team has been visiting other schools to try to understand how they made the switch from Social Security-dominated systems. He said a group would be visiting the University in April to help explain how a complete overhaul would work.

Michael Sullivan, a senator from the College of Science, said the resolution was not meant to admonish Dietz but that the University should act quickly to address professors' concerns. He said the resolution should be acted on soon. "It doesn't say that we are going to throw Larry Dietz into a vat of boiling oil," Sullivan said, referring to the resolution asking the administration to act. "But I think we should do it now."