The New Advisor Guidebook by Pat Folsom & Franklin Yoder & Jennifer E. Joslin

Author:Pat Folsom & Franklin Yoder & Jennifer E. Joslin [Folsom, Pat & Yoder, Franklin & Joslin, Jennifer]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781118823606
Publisher: Wiley
Published: 2015-08-20T00:00:00+00:00

Disclosures Under the Health and Safety Exception.

Regulatory updates to FERPA in 2008, largely in response to the tragic deaths at Virginia Tech caused by a troubled student, clarify that an advisor may release private information upon learning that a student has articulated a threat posing significant danger to him- or herself or to any other person. The advisor “may disclose information from education records to any person whose knowledge of the information is necessary to protect the health or safety of the student or other individuals” (34 C.F.R. § 99.36, 2008). In the analysis of a potential health and safety exception to general FERPA nondisclosure rules, advisors should consider whether they learned of the threatening behavior through an education record (e.g., an e-mail from the student) or simply from an in-person conversation. FERPA does not apply to the latter situation because a conversation does not qualify as an education record (Family Policy Compliance Office, 2006).

Many campuses have developed threat assessment teams as recommended by the governor's report following the Virginia Tech tragedy; these teams receive non-emergency information about troubling behaviors and work to determine any risk they pose to safety or security (Dunkle, Silverstein, & Warner, 2008). New advisors should familiarize themselves with the campus threat assessment team and how best to access and utilize it.

In addition to encouraging advisors to report troubling behavior to threat assessment teams, institutions frequently employ institutional policy that makes advisors mandatory reporters of information pertaining to sexual assault. As a result, advisors need to know the procedures for reporting a sexual assault to the institution. Even in places without an institutional or state mandate, FERPA permits advisors to report threatening behaviors and statements from students through the health and safety exception. In this regard, advisors have more flexibility to disclose confidential conversations (which are not FERPA-protected educational records) or e-mail messages (which likely are educational records) than licensed medical and mental health providers are afforded under their professional confidentiality obligations and medical record privacy laws (Tribbensee, 2008).

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