Nearly three out of four colleges ask applicants a variation of the question most dreaded by those who have been on the wrong side of the law: Have you ever been convicted of a crime?
Some colleges are only concerned with violent felonies, others with misdemeanors or even high-school suspensions. And what they do with that information, ostensibly gathered only to keep their campuses safe, varies widely.
Relatively few reject students outright on the basis of criminal convictions, but many require those applicants to jump through so many hoops, gathering letters from probation officers and corrections officials, waiting additional months for committee deliberations, that the students give up.
Many of the colleges that now pore over applicants’ rap sheets began doing so in response to violent crimes by students, including the mass shooting at Virginia Tech in 2007.
Colleges are also acutely aware today of their responsibilities in preventing sexual assaults, a factor that could cause more to turn away applicants with histories of sex crimes. Such policies, some campus officials argue, could help protect students from harm and colleges from lawsuits.
But there is no evidence that people with criminal histories are any more likely to commit crimes on campus, or that any of the recent campus shootings, including those at Virginia Tech, were by people with criminal histories, says Robert A. Stewart, a doctoral student at the University of Minnesota-Twin Cities, who is conducting a nationwide study of such screenings.
Read more at The Chronicle of Higher Education: https://chronicle.com/article/Do-Your-Students-Have-Criminal/190517
share