Sven Alskog
News Editor
The Idaho State University online directory is a source that provides contact information for university staff, faculty and students.
Currently the name, phone number and email address for students is taken from the information they submit on BengalWeb and put onto this directory.
A student memo sent out Nov. 21, 2014 from the Office of the Registrar discusses a notice of directory information.
“Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) authorizes the release of ‘Directory Information’ without the student’s prior consent under certain conditions which are set forth in the Act,” read the memo.
It then discusses some of the information which the university can release including the name of the student, address and telephone listings, email addresses and basic academic information such as class level, major and dates of attendance.
According to the memo, if a student wants to restrict access to all of this directory information they need to fill out a Non-Disclosure Declaration of Educational Record Information and turn that in to the Registrar.
Registrar Laura McKenzie said there are students who have decided to take this route.
“The General Counsel Legal Office worked to send out FERPA information,” said McKenzie. “An email was sent out to students allowing them to block the information from being let out. The directory does not extract student’s information who have put a block on [that information] being put out.”
There are downsides to putting a block on that information from a student perspective, as the November memo notes.
“Please understand that placing a full Non-Disclosure hold on your student records will cause any and all future requests for contact information from ISU persons, on non-essential matters, and from non-institutional persons and organizations, including scholarship organizations, prospective employers, etc., to be denied,” read the memo. “The restriction will remain in place even after you have stopped attending or have graduated from Idaho State University.”
Transcript requests for students who would like to attend graduate school would also reportedly be denied in this situation.
Currently the information seen on the online directory is made available once an individual becomes a student.
“We don’t release anything that is not directory,” said Office of the Registrar Administrative Assistant Karen Tolman. “There is not really an approval process [prior to the information being released].”
Mark Norviel of Information Technology Systems (ITS) is in charge of getting the information from the Registrar onto the directory itself.
“All the information comes from the Registrar,” said Norviel. “I don’t manage the data. It is all managed by the Registrar’s office. I am more of a data custodian.”
Students can update the information when they move to a new location or change phone numbers through their BengalWeb account. The site also has the option of having a current and a future mailing address which helps to ensure that important mail correspondence will reach the student when it is sent.
Mailing and address information is not made visible through the online directory.
As of Jan. 25, 2015, the student information made public on the directory includes their name, class level, major, phone number and email address.
The primary objective of an online directory is to allow a one-stop shop for students, faculty and staff to get in contact with each other.
Employees of ISU have their name, title, work address and phone, along with their email address on the directory.
The directory can be accessed through the “Quick Links” tab at isu.edu, followed by clicking “Directories (Phone/Email)” or directly from a web browser at http://ds.netel.isu.edu/isdb/.
