photo illustration / the current
Crime and safety are major concerns among open colleges and universities like the University of Missouri-St. Louis, especially after the recent sexual assaults. Yet the UM-St. Louis School of Social Work has an experimental solution—to have the school’s students wear their student ID cards on lanyards, visible at all times, starting today. If the policy is successful, it could be implemented campus wide.
“The benefit of the lanyard is knowing, ‘Does this person belong here or not?’” Dr. Thomas Meuser, associate social work professor and Director of Gerontology Program, said. “The university is supporting this experiment and we would like to have this extended elsewhere, possibly campus wide.”
According to a leaflet outside of Bellerive Hall, the building is locked at 5:00 p.m.
“To get in after 5:00 P.M. you would have to swipe your student ID if you’re in the system,” Meuser said. “In the summer we’ll say, ‘If you don’t have your lanyard on, you need to identify yourself, or you’re going to leave the building.’”
However, many UM-St. Louis students do not like the idea of wearing their IDs around their necks. Jue Hou, freshman, international business calls the idea “strict and out of line.” And Alan Wegener, sophomore, optometry says wearing a lanyard would be a pain.
“I just barely got out of high school before my school implemented it,” Wegener said. “It just seems like a big pain in the butt. I would do everything possible not to wear it.”
Nevertheless, Wegener, like all students, could be required to wear a lanyard if the policy is successful in the School of Social Work and then implemented campus wide.
Dawn Faria, a junior nursing student is also in opposition.
“It would segregate and divide the student population from everyone else,” Faria said. “What if the next step is the university using metal detectors? It does not seem like a good idea to wear your student identity card on your neck.”
The reasoning behind requiring students to wear the lanyards is to increase safety at UM-St. Louis. However, some wonder if lanyards could actually worsen the problem. UM-St. Louis student identity cards have student names, signatures, pictures and student identity numbers on them, and Rachel Manning, senior, elementary education, feels uncomfortable displaying that information publically.
“Everyone wants to go to a school and feel safe,” Manning said. “With the school being so public, it seems like lanyards with peoples’ names would be putting personal information out in the open.”
Aside from the student opposition, the move to have students display their IDs publicly could be in violation of existing university policy and even federal law.
Manning’s concerns raise the question of whether requiring students to wear their student IDs around their necks would be in accordance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act or FERPA. Manning calls the information displayed on student IDs “personal” and that is exactly what FERPA sets out to protect.
The UM-St. Louis student handbook states that “faculty of UM-St. Louis will not post or display, either electronically or in hard copy, lists of students’ personal identifiable forms, including the student’s name or any four consecutive digits of students’ social security numbers or student identification numbers.”
This policy, according to the UM-St. Louis student handbook, is in accordance with FERPA. Passed in 1974, FERPA does state that student identification numbers cannot be posted in public view.
However, there have been debates since FERPA passed over whether or not a student ID number, or other information such as a student’s email address can be disclosed by educators. In 2000, FERPA was amended to say that email addresses can be disclosed, and the U.S. Department of Education has since said that in the case that a student ID number is random and not linked with the student’s SSN, it too is okay to disclose.
Nevertheless, none of the proponents of the lanyards mentioned FERPA or student privacy, but only referenced their assumed safety benefits.
“I feel it is a positive move, and safety is an issue for everyone on a college campus,” Beverly Sporleder, Co-Director of Field Education and student services for the Social Work Department, said.
“I’m sure there are people who say [UM-St. Louis] is a public institution and people should be able to move in and out, but considering we have had situations that are pretty horrific we need to have a means to protect our students. A lot of our students are women.”
