CAMPUS/AREA
University Daily Kansan/Wednesday, October 23, 1991
3
Use of ID numbers for posting grades breaks privacy act
By Jennifer Bach
Kneipp staff writer
Kansan staff writer
KU faculty will have to find alternative ways of distributing grades to students other than posting them according to KUID numbers.
presentation. David Shulenburger, associate vice chancellor for academic affairs, said the Student Senate Executive Committee brought the illegality of grade posting with KUID numbers to the attention of administrators three weeks ago.
Since then, the office of academic affairs has distributed fliers to all faculty members and graduate teaching assistants reaffirming that posting graduate numbers is an investment in physics
Posting students' grades according to their names or KUID numbers is a violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, more commonly known as the Buckley Amendment, said Rose Marino, associate general counsel.
Some professors may not have known that the amendment, which has been in effect since 1974, applies to posting grades according to the numbers.
Posting any kind of identifiable information about students with their grades is the most blunt violation of the amendment, Marino said.
Identifiable information also includes a student's name, social security number, personal characteristic or any other information revealing a student's identity.
Shuleenburger, who also is a professor of business, said that the thought many of his colleagues would be bothered by having to adhere to the amendment.
"It's very difficult to get grade information back to students except by posting." he said.
However, instructors do have the option of devising a secret identification code with a student so the grade can be posted, Shulenburger said.
"There are numerous ways it may work," he said.
Anne Silbert, assistant professor of economics, has had students sign a permission slip attached to the top of her final exam that allows her to post their grades, she said.
Sibert gives students who do not sign permission slips the option of tracking her down or giving her a self-addressed stamped envelope to find out their course grades.
Bob Turvey, associate director of the student assistant center, said problems due to posting grades by KUID numbers without students' permission were not overwhelming.
But those problems probably occur more than people realize, he said.
"They're out there." Turvey said. "But people are not questioning the process. When they do, it gets resolved quickly."
Professors look for quick and easy ways to distribute their students' grades and sometimes do not think of the ramifications of grade posting. Therefore said
*It's not intentional, but it's not right," he said.
Lecture series needs money, then speakers
Kansan staff writer
By Blaine Kimrey
Kansas staff writer
The KU Lecture Series Board will pop the
$40,000 question tonight.
During the Student Senate meeting at the Big Right Room in the Kansas Union, the board will present a bill to Senate requesting $20,000 from the Senate Unallocated Account.
The unallocated account is financed by student fees.
If the bill is passed, the board will use the money to finance a speaking engagement by one high-profile speaker at the University of Kansas this spring.
Selection of the speaker would be based on a survey of the student body conducted by the
however, Kurt Broeckelmann, head of the board, said the board ultimately would decide whether to sell its shares.
"It's a survey, not a vote," he said. "We're trying to come up with a pool of names that would represent a majority."
Alexia Dillard, vice president of Student Union Activities, said that not all of the $20,000 would be spoken on the speaker. Because the lecture series
is a new program, part of the money would be spent on establishing the logistics of the program, he said.
Dillard said the board would be targeting speakers in the $1,500 to $1,600 range.
If the lecture series is financed by Senate, KU students will be able to fill out cards within the next few weeks indicating their speaker preferences.
The cards would include the names of speakers who fall within the specified price range.
Broekelman said the cards probably would be in the SUA office and the Organization and Activities Center for students to fill out.
The board also might set up a table in front of Wescoe Hall for students to fill out the cards, he said.
Based on student suggestions, the board would select a speaker to come to KU, he said.
Although the final choice of the speaker would be the board's, Broeckelmann said the selection process still would be fair.
He said the board was a diverse group that reflected the opinions of the campus.
"I don't think they're going to become biased," he said.
SenEx supports ideas in disputed statement
Document accuses Regents of misinforming universities
By Alexander Bloemhof Kansan staff writer
The University Senate Executive Committee yesterday supported the ideas in a controversial statement that faculty representatives presented at Thursday's Board meeting.
The statement, written by the Council of Faculty Senate Presidents, accused the Regents of misinforming the schools about a hidden agenda and of pursuing a hidden agenda.
However, SenEx agreed only in principle with the concerns expressed in the state bill, which did not address them.
After the statement was read Thursday, the Regents recommended that the faculty submit a response.
Bezalee Benjamin, professor of architectural engineering, said that he agreed with the ideas of the document but that the language was too strong to be endorsed by
But Frances Ingemann, KU's Faculty Senate president, said he expected that the Regents would react more positively after
reading copies of the statement.
"Most of them were very displeased at being attacked," Ingemann said. "Because it was presented orally, people did not pick up on the careful wording but, instead, on the strong language."
Regent Robert Creighton of Atwood had criticized that the statement had not been discussed with faculty members at the individual schools before being read at the
However, Ingemann said that was impossible.
She said the statement had been drafted overnight and discussed at breakfast immediately before the Regents meeting began.
She said the faculty representatives had prepared the statement in response to a meeting of the Council of Chief Academic Officers that they attended Oct. 16. CoCAO is composed of the heads of the Regents schools' academic affairs offices.
At that meeting, faculty representatives observed that the council could not work on its own mission statement because it was
spending all its time responding to a mission statement drafted by the Regents staf in August.
At their September meeting, the Regents referred the mission statement to the CoCAO for review after being criticized by the six Regents schools. The schools complained that the statement would shift authority in school matters from the individual schools to the Regents.
University officials expected that CoCAO would substantially change the mission statement.
Ingemann said she thought that the results from the Regents September meeting had been negated.
"Instead of allowing CoCAO to proceed with making its own document, there was pressure to go back to the staff document," Ingemann said.
SenEx members yesterday received a draft mission statement from the CaCAO, but they decided to postpone discussion until they had had enough time to read through it.
I can't watch!
Trying to be brave, Nathalie Mueller, left, looks away just before Angie Kukovich, nurse technician for the American Red Cross, begins to draw Mueller's blood. The Leavenworth senior said she felt fine after donating one pint of blood Monday at the Kansas Union Ballroom. The Red Cross hopes to collect about 900 pints of blood by tomorrow, the last day of the drive.
University wildlife rehabilitation clinic saves poisoned pigeons
By Jerry Schwilling
Special to the Kansan
Mary Weeks was not on a rescue mission. She was shopping.
"Taking a break from shopping at the Riverfront, Plaza, she saw a group of people gathered at the rail overlooking the Kansas River. When she wiped them, she saw a pigeon struggling in the river, making its way to shore.
Weeks ran down to the river bank and retrieved the convulsing bird. She rushed it to the University of Kansas
Wildcare Unit, where a staff member administered atropine, a poison antidote.
The bird survived.
Once or twice will, Wildcare receives a rash of as many as 10 calls within a three-day period about dead or bruised skin, evidence of the river and on campus.
"This happens all the time," said Amy Albright, rehabilitation coordinator at Wildcare, a rehabilitation clinic for injured wildlife.
No autopsies or blood tests have been
conducted on the birds, but Wildcare officials speculate that because the atropine saves many of the birds, they must be ingesting poisons.
But no one knows where the poisons are coming from.
She said she was worried that many other animals could be harmed by feeding on the poisons or poisoned dead niggers.
Albright said she suspected that poisons were being used to control Lawrence's nigeon population.
*We've found birds and dead scavengers together," she said.
Last December, city sanitation workers found a subarcetic形 great horned owl convulsing over the body of a dead piglet, Albird awrote. Wildcare was able to save the owl with atropine. The owl later was returned to the wild.
Several area pest-control experts have said they do not use poison to control nipens in Lawrence.
Garry Keeler, Douglas County extension agent for agriculture, said non-lithological devices were available to discourage pigeons from perching where they
were not wanted.
He suggested using bird bangers, shot shells that go off at intervals, and balloons with large eyes painted on them to frighten unwanted pigeons away.
Jim Jorgensen, manager at Termix
Termite and Pest Control, said his
company used such bird bangers and
baloons for pigeon control.
He said that his company did not use poisons and that he did not know of any other company that used poisons to control pigeons.
Available pest-control poisons are
strictly controlled by state law and require a user's permit, Jorgensen said.
One type of poison, Avitrol, is mixed with cracked corn or bird seed as bait and is toxic to most creatures, he said.
Greg Olmsted, director of environmental health for Lawrence and Douglas County, said he did not know of anyone poisoning poisons in Lawrence.
Live traps are recommended for pigeon control, he said.
The pigeons then can be taken to a remote location and released. Olmsted