Unintended Consequences

The Virginia-Pilot's Kerry Dougherty goes for the throat. Here's the rub for Dougherty:
"On Monday, [Virginia] Tech president Charles Steger told the panel [investigating the Virginia Tech shootings] that federal privacy laws effectively gag school officials from disclosing personal information about students. Even more troubling, they prevent medical professionals from sharing critical information about students with school administrators."

But consider this case of a straight-A sophomore at George Washington University who sought emergency psychiatric care for depression. "When they [GWU administrators] learned of [his] hospitalization, university officials charged him with violating the school code of conduct, suspended him, evicted him from his dorm and threatened him with arrest for trespassing if he set foot on university property." All of which lead the Washington Post to ask, “[s]ince when does being sick constitute a disciplinary problem?” The answer is, unfortunately, when liability to the university attaches - which it most certainly will under Dougherty's approach.

A recent example is the tragic case of the MIT student who made use of the university counseling service before setting herself on fire. "The Massachusetts Superior Court recently allowed her parents, who had not been told of her psychological deterioration, to sue administrators for $27.7 million. The case was settled for an undisclosed amount."

The bookends of these two incidents make for a pretty complicated problem for universities that leads to just one solution: mandatory reporting requirements from health officials to universities and from universities to parents (and potentially in the reverse order). But do we really want to revert to a kind of in loco parentis approach that exceeds even the rights of parents? While I sympathize with Dougherty's sentiments, the solution, whatever it might be, requires more than just a cursory examination of who does and doesn't 'deserve' privacy rights.