Most parents of college students get plenty of campus-related information newsletters, solicitations, the inevitable bills. But if the student fails a slew of courses, attempts suicide or is hospitalized after a drinking binge, mom and dad may be kept in the dark.

Of the many dilemmas confronting colleges today, few are as vexing or potentially serious as parental notification. A case in point is the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, target of a $27 million lawsuit by parents who say they should have been warned of their daughter’s worsening mental health before she committed suicide in 2000.

In less dramatic form, college administrators nationwide often have to balance a student’s privacy rights against parents’ desire to know if their child is in trouble.

“The universities are finding themselves under fire from both sides, one saying we’re doing too little, the other saying we’re doing too much,” said Rick Olshak, an Illinois State University official and outgoing president of the Association for Student Judicial Affairs.

Under a 1974 federal privacy act, most colleges stopped notifying parents about the academic, disciplinary and health problems of their children.

Congress amended the law in 1998 to specify that administrators could tell parents about alcohol and drug offenses committed by students under 21. Since then, scores of colleges have adopted notification policies, often despite opposition from student government bodies.

Kansas University policies

Many schools notify parents only about serious incidents in which health and safety are at risk, and do not report routine cases of underage drinking.

“Quite frankly, we’ve not been faced with that in that most problems with alcohol occur off campus and are handled by local or county police,” said David Ambler, vice chancellor for student affairs at Kansas University. “The university usually doesn’t even get notified.”

In cases of medical emergency or mental illness, however, notification sometimes takes place at KU, Ambler said. If a student needs to be hospitalized, university officials refer to the student’s health history to find the person to notify in case of emergency. And although parents are not notified if their child simply seeks psychiatric help on campus, the therapist does have the option of notifying parents if they think their child is in danger.

“If, in the view of the therapist that’s working with a student, there is a serious problem the student’s not capable of dealing with, the therapist could indicate to the student that he or she feels the student should notify the parent, and if they don’t, the therapist might,” Ambler said. “That’s more the decision of the therapist than it is university policy.”

An exception to the norm

At the University of Delaware, parents are notified of every alcohol and drug infraction, and administrators say violations have dropped markedly.

“Parents are often in a position to influence students in ways that the institution is not,” said John Bishop, Delaware’s vice president for counseling and student development.

While some colleges’ notification policies seem aimed at reducing vulnerability to lawsuits, Delaware’s motivation was to curb heavy drinking, Bishop said.

“Our students now tell anyone who asks that the ‘party school’ reputation no longer applies,” Bishop said. “Some are mourning the loss … but we’re getting more applications from better students than ever before.”

Delaware is praised as an exception to the norm by Jeffrey Levy, who became an advocate for parental notification after his son, Jonathan, died in a 1997 drunk-driving accident while attending Radford University in Virginia. Levy learned only after the crash that Jonathan had several run-ins with school officials for drinking violations.

Though pleased that notification policies are spreading, Levy says implementation is often halfhearted. “It’s a sham,” he said. “The students are confident no one will call their parents.”

Howard and Connie Clery of Bryn Mawr, Pa., who founded the advocacy group Security on Campus after their daughter was raped and murdered at Lehigh University, say many colleges balk at notification because of embarrassment over widespread drinking.

“They don’t want to tell parents that kids are in the emergency wards every weekend getting their stomachs pumped out,” Howard Clery said.

While Delaware made about 1,400 notifications in the first year of its policy, other schools consider notification a last resort.

Bill Riley, dean of students at the University of Illinois, said only about 10 families were contacted during the first year of a new policy calling for notification if an infraction jeopardizes someone’s health or safety. The policy is designed as a tool to combat substance abuse, not as a punitive measure, Riley said.

Student privacy

Critics of parental notification include the Philadelphia-based Foundation for Individual Rights in Education. Its executive director, Thor Halvorssen, says colleges have been too hasty in undermining student privacy.

“Notification policies send a message that infantilizes young adults,” Halvorssen said. “Their contemporaries in the military or in factories, they’re adults, but students aren’t? We’ve got to resist this urge that students must be supervised.”

Ambler said KU had always tried to operate under the notion that the law says students are adults when they turn 18.

“But, quite frankly, my instruction to my staff is I expect you to use common sense,” he said. “Whether you’re dealing with an 18-year-old or a 28-year-old, if they’re in some kind of danger and not capable of taking care of themselves, we ought to notify somebody.”

Montana State University is among the still-sizable group of schools without a notification policy.

“Individual autonomy rules here,” said Jim Mitchell, student health director at the Bozeman, Mont., campus. “Students are held accountable, but they’re treated as adults.”

One problem with rigid notification policies, Mitchell said, is that they might deter a student from seeking medical help after alcohol or drug abuse.

“If going to an emergency center for intoxication is a trigger for parental notification, that’s really dangerous,” he said.

Mitchell also said colleges may misunderstand family dynamics.

“You can’t assume the relationship is always wonderful,” he said. “Sometimes you can really do harm to a student by involving parents.”

At MIT, where the parents of Elizabeth Shin have sued, President Charles Vest said the school felt obligated to protect the confidentiality of Shin’s medical records. He expressed support for the staff members who dealt with her.

“The quandary that they face is balancing students’ legal and medical privacy rights with the obvious interests of parents in knowing how their sons and daughters are doing,” Vest wrote to the MIT community last week (Feb. 4). “This quandary is worked through on a case-by-case basis by professional judgment of how best to help each student.”