Written by: Michelle Cormier
Published: 07/01/2010

Experts Debate Criminal Background Checks on College Students

On Wednesday, a panel of experts convened at the annual conference of the National Association of College and University Attorneys to debate the fairness of criminal background checks on students, reports the Chronicle of Higher Education.

In the wake of the 2004 murder of a University of North Carolina at Wilmington student by a classmate with a history of violence, the UNC system introduced a policy of investigating some students' criminal backgrounds. A committee – composed of representatives from the police department, counseling center, and general counsel's office, among other divisions – reviews criminal background checks on students whose records raise red flags and considers whether those students, if enrolled at the time of their infractions, would have been suspended or expelled.

"Those are fair questions for an institution to be asking," Patricia L. Leonard, UNC-Wilmington's vice chancellor for student affairs, told the group of lawyers.

Darby Dickerson, vice president and dean at the Stetson University College of Law, described criminal background checks as a "legal and policy jigsaw puzzle" of intertwined concerns about campus safety, legal risk and individual rights, reports Inside Higher Ed. "Implementing background checks as part of the admissions process is not a panacea," Dickerson said, but such reviews can be "part of a more comprehensive campus safety" policy.

Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of external relations at AACRAO, questioned whether background checks do much to make campuses safer, though, and warned against enacting admissions policies that would actively bar applicants with criminal records.

He presented the results of an unpublished survey conducted by the association in conjunction with the Center for Community Alternatives, an advocacy group for the rehabilitation of juvenile offenders, which found that more than 60 percent of colleges consider applicants' criminal histories in admissions decisions, but less than half of those have formal policies for how to do so. According to the survey, most colleges that request criminal or disciplinary histories do so through self-disclosure questions on applications for admission. Of the 144 institutions that reported collecting criminal justice information from all applicants, only ten said they used criminal background checks.

The survey found that only 38 percent of admissions staffs receive training on interpreting criminal records.

Nassirian argued against what he called untrained, mechanical decisions to keep prospective students with rap sheets out of higher education. Colleges ought to try to serve students with criminal pasts who have resolved to overcome their histories, he said. "Educating people and putting them on the right path is a social responsibility."

The results of the Criminal History Screening in College Admissions Procedures Survey will be available soon.

Related Links:

The Chronicle of Higher Education
http://chronicle.com/article/Experts-Debate-Fairness-of/66107/

Inside Higher Ed
http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2010/07/01/background