In an effort to increase student safety and security, students, faculty and staff may need a password to access the online student directory as early as mid-semester.
The proposal, created by University of Idaho Dean of Students Bruce Pitman, would limit the amount of information available as well as require a VandalWeb login to access the directory.
“Quite simply, it is a proposal to provide students more privacy with their information that would normally appear on the public directory,” Pitman said. “The proposal is really in two parts. The first is to limit the amount of actual information that appears on the directory to name, academic major and email address. The second part of the proposal is to make the student directory information available only to members of the university community.”
Pitman said discussion for the proposal began after several students contacted him and expressed concern about the availability of personal information available on uidaho.edu.
“They were concerned that there were, in some cases, local addresses and phone numbers available to anybody who really wanted to have access to them,” Pitman said.
He said there were a couple of cases where students believed they had unwanted contact because of the public directory information.
Prior to creating the proposal, Pitman met with ASUI President Hannah Davis as well as the presidents of the Student Bar and Graduate and Professional Student associations to gather student input.
Davis said the switch to a private directory is an easy way to make students feel safer.
“Some people aren’t comfortable with how much information is available to anybody who can log on to our website. Changing and making the student directory more private is an easy way to fix that,” Davis said.
Davis said she has never felt unsafe due to the information available, but has talked with students who said it made them uncomfortable.
“I don’t think it necessarily was a problem … I don’t think there was anybody going on to the student directory to do malicious things, but it’s just better to make it more private and that much more safe for people that are uncomfortable with it,” Davis said. “It’s about making everybody feel safe no matter what. I personally didn’t feel unsafe but if someone did, then that’s one too many who feels unsafe about having that information out there.”
Pitman said once students expressed their concerns and the proposal was discussed, he examined the directories of other universities.
“The norm is to have less information out on a directory and to keep that information generally to name, major and email address,” Pitman said.
Pitman said the change would not affect the faculty and staff directory, which would remain public.
“This is only student directory information. We’re wanting to give students an extra measure of privacy,” Pitman said. “The added privacy adds a little more safety and security for some students and gives students more control of their personal information. I think that generally students will be pleased that we are making this proposal to give them more privacy.”
Pitman said students have always had the option to be completely removed from the directory, but not many students take advantage of that option.
“We have had and will continue to have the ability for students to request that their information not appear on the directory at all. We have had that as a protocol for a number of years, but frankly a lot of students don’t know that that option is available to them,” Pitman said.
Pitman said students who would like to give feedback on the proposal can email [email protected] or talk to their student government representatives.
“I hope that we can gather student input on this within the next few weeks. Once we complete that evaluation of student reaction, then it would be possible for us to make the change within the next couple weeks,” Pitman said.
Kaitlyn Krasselt can be reached at [email protected]