Handbook - Privacy of student information

Privacy of student information
The 1974 Privacy Act, commonly known as the Buckley Amendment, prohibits the release to third parties of any student information related to grades or academic progress without WRITTEN permission of the student. In practice, this means that:

 Grades should NOT be posted—even if only the last numbers of the social security number are used. Our college has a good system for making final grades available to students via CougarWeb in a timely manner, so there should be no need to post final grades. If absolutely necessary to make a posting, random numbers and non-alphabetical order should be used.
 Faculty cannot tell students’ friends, parents, guardians, employers or relatives how the student does or is doing in a course—regardless of justification—without written permission.
 Papers should be returned in a private manner. They should not be put in a public place such as a box, folder, or faculty mailbox (without written permission from the student) because others will have access to them.
 When handing back papers in class, faculty members should take care to protect the privacy of each student’s grade. Although it isn’t possible to guarantee that others won’t see a grade, it is important to take reasonable precautions to ensure the grades are not deliberately or carelessly revealed to others by the faculty member.