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Students seek privacy
Student government to prevent professors from asking for social security numbers
By Jake Zisla
SCSU student government is asking instructors to stop using social security numbers as the main form of identification for students on tests and assignments.
Monday, student body president Brett Sween sent a proposal to Minnesota State Colleges and Universities (MnSCU), outlining student government’s request that social security numbers be banned as a form of identification.
“Our academic affairs committee looked into it, and we found that there is no legislation with any real teeth in it to prevent social security numbers from being used,” Sween said. “Social security numbers have been used in a kind of careless way, posted on the wall or left on a desk and our resolution seeks to deal with that.”
Sween added that student government’s resolution recommends to MnSCU the implementation of this rule on a system-wide basis.
“If they do it, it will affect the students here, as well as students at the other MnSCU schools,” he said. “If we can just get it done at the campus level, that would be good, but we want to go a little further up the chain.”
SCSU took steps to eliminate the issue four years ago, when identification numbers on college ID’s were switched from social security numbers to tech ID’s. According to Sween, however, the problem still exists.
“We had a number of students come in (to the student government office) and complain that they were being asked to give up their social security numbers,” he said.
Sween said he sees the possibility of identity theft and registering for credit cards as potential harms that could come from using social security numbers.
“You could really do some damage to someone’s credit rating with their social security number, because its such a sensitive part of their identification,” he said. “It shouldn’t be that complicated an issue. People don’t want their social security numbers to be public, so it should be common sense not to ask for them. But I guess if it was common sense, it wouldn’t be happening.”
Instructors generally ask students for their tech ID numbers, and if the student can’t remember it, that’s when the social security numbers come into play.
Steve Frank, chair of the political science department, agreed with Sween that it should be a simple issue.
“If MnSCU came to me tomorrow and said ‘You can’t ask for social security numbers anymore,’ I’d say ‘OK, fine, I’ll just assign students random numbers for identification,’” Frank said. “It’s not about getting social security numbers out of the students, it’s more a way of keeping them from knowing who everyone else is, and keeping test scores or whatever else more private.”
Frank also noted that faculty members received notices that they are not to ask for social security numbers from the students.
“We have always been told that if we ask for a social security number, it can only be the last four digits,” he said. “We just want to identify the student without using their name, so if it’s a tech ID, or a random number, or whatever, it’s not really an issue.”
Sween, who also mailed a copy of the resolution to SCSU President Roy Saigo’s office with the intention of at least dealing with the issue for SCSU, hopes that the measures will be preventative.
“Hopefully, reminding people that it is a concern of students here will be enough to preempt any further usage,” Sween said. “But you never know. That’s why we want to get a system-wide policy in place, or at least a university-wide policy.”
Early indications from SCSU administration are that the resolution will be accepted on the university level. Marsha Shoemaker, special assistant to the president, alluded to Frank’s comments about protections already being in place for the students.
“The resolution isn’t asking for a change, it’s just making sure that certain policies are adhered to,” Shoemaker said. “The professors have already been asked not to use social security numbers publicly, as far as not posting them or displaying them, so this resolution enforces that.”
Shoemaker said she was certain the resolution would gain the support of SCSU administrators. Sween’s hopes for system-wide changes from MnSCU, however, seems tenuous at best.
Nancy Conner, publications and media relations director for MnSCU, said that MnSCU Chancellor James McCormack had not had a chance to look at the resolution yet, but that others within the organization had.
“It’s understandable that the students are concerned,” Conner said. “But MnSCU feels that these types of issues are best handled by students through their own administrations at the campus level.”
While Conner could not say whether that policy would apply to this resolution, she said MnSCU prefers that most requests of this nature be handled on a campus-by-campus basis.
Whatever MnSCU decides, the concern of SCSU students, the resolution by student government, and the existing rules on campus should ensure the end of social security numbers as identification at SCSU.
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