Credit-card companies would have a harder time selling their plastic on campus under a proposal being considered by the Kansas Board of Regents.

But a letter sent to Kansas University officials by the Attorney General’s Office will change the way KU handles some credit-card hawking, no matter what the regents decide.

The letter, from Theresa Marcel Nuckolls, assistant attorney general, says KU hasn’t taken proper steps to keep lists of student names and addresses from being used for commercial solicitation, which is illegal in Kansas.

KU provides the lists to the KU Alumni Association, which is the official custodian of such records. The Alumni Association, in turn, has provided the information to Intrust Bank, which has a KU credit card and sends sign-up materials to current students and alumni.

Though Nuckolls said there was no proof KU officials knew the student records would be used for solicitation, she said KU needed written assurance the Alumni Association would only use the records for other purposes, such as its directory. Failure to have that assurance, she said, could result in criminal prosecution of the university.

Lynn Bretz, director of university relations, said the letter had prompted talk of a more detailed system for transferring records to the Alumni Association.

“We have to ensure that information we provide isn’t going to be used for commercial purposes,” she said.

Fred Williams, president of the Alumni Association, wasn’t available for comment Tuesday. The Alumni Association’s attorney, Jeff Heeb, didn’t return a phone message left at his office.

The letter was in response to a complaint from Justin Mills, the former student body president who has fought to ban credit-card companies on the KU campus.

“It’s a privacy issue,” Mills said. “The law says you can’t use public records to solicit for any type of item of service. They take records provided to them to promote the Alumni Association and use them to sell credit cards. It’s all for alumni. Why should we be paying for alumni functions?”

Meanwhile, Mills and other student body presidents have developed a proposal limiting credit-card companies’ access at state universities. The Board of Regents will discuss the proposal at its June meeting.

The proposal would:

 Require solicitors to provide information about prudent use of credit cards to students who complete applications.

 Require bookstores to distribute credit-card cautions in shopping bags that include applications.

 Ban solicitation during the week before school begins and during the first two weeks of school.

 Require universities to include credit education information during orientation programs.

The plan also would allow individual universities to create stricter standards. Emporia State University and Fort Hays State University already ban all on-campus solicitation.

KU’s Student Senate approved a similar bill this spring, but KU administrators haven’t acted on it.

Dick Carter, director of external relations for the regents, said the students had worked with Reps. Rocky Nichols, D-Topeka, and Ralph Tanner, R-Baldwin, on the proposal. Regents officials had hoped to create an administrative policy rather than having the Legislature enact laws governing the solicitation.

“I think it’s a good baseline place to deal with the perceived problem,” Carter said. “Some campuses deal with it differently than others.”