A student's tip led an AU official to remove multiple boxes, including an open box containing forms with students' Social Security numbers on them, from a hallway on the second floor of the McKinley Building Friday.
Huyen Nguyen, a junior in the College of Arts and Sciences, said he was walking in the inner hallway of the building Monday or Tuesday of last week when he first noticed the boxes, which were stacked against the wall.
While some of the boxes were closed and had signs reading "Do Not Move!! Property of the School of Education" affixed to their lids, others were open. There was a stack of papers inside one of the open boxes. The top paper visible was a record of an AU alumnus's student teaching experience during the fall 2001 semester. That form included the student's full name as well as the student's Social Security number, according to written and photographic evidence Nguyen sent to The Eagle Friday morning.
Nguyen said he initially did not realize how much of a problem it was for those forms to be in public view until later that week. He returned to McKinley to take photos of the boxes on Thursday night.
Nguyen also contacted Student Government President Joe Vidulich. Vidulich said he was shocked when he heard about Nguyen's discovery early Friday afternoon.
Vidulich called the associate dean of students' office, Vice President of Campus Life Gail Hanson and CAS Dean Kay Mussell.
"They asked me how I knew these records were theirs, so I faxed over the information [Nguyen] gave me," Vidulich said.
When an Eagle reporter went to investigate Nguyen's tip at 4 p.m. that day, the boxes were no longer in the hallway.
The School of Education, Teaching and Health had been headquartered in the McKinley Building until 2003, when it moved to its present location in Gray Hall. All SETH student records are supposed to be secured in the school's offices, according to SETH Dean Sarah Irvine Belson.
An Eagle reporter called Belson and left a voicemail asking for comment about the tip. Belson said that after she received the Eagle reporter's voicemail and several others pertaining to the situation, she contacted Judy Swannee, SETH's graduate programs adviser and coordinator.
Swannee removed the boxes and secured them in the offices of the International Training and Education Program, a SETH program still located in McKinley, Belson said.
Belson investigated the contents of the boxes earlier this week so she could know the true nature of the situation. Six of the boxes moved from the hallway actually belonged to SETH. Of those, three contained sensitive student information. Other boxes belonged to the College of Arts and Sciences or contained trash. Belson said she did not further investigate the contents of boxes not belonging to SETH.
SETH officials are taking the situation very seriously, Belson said.
"We are all very concerned about what information might have been divulged since these boxes came to be in that hallway," she said.
Nguyen said he did not move any of the papers or boxes when he took the photos. The copies of the photos sent to The Eagle were altered to remove the names and Social Security numbers on the forms. Nguyen said he has deleted the original, unaltered versions of the photos at Belson's request.
The discovery and removal of the boxes came days before Georgetown University revealed that someone stole a hard drive containing the billing information of 38,000 students, staff and faculty from a university computer. The theft occurred some time between Dec. 21 and Jan. 3 - the day the hard drive was reported stolen, The Hoya, Georgetown's student newspaper reported Tuesday.
Georgetown was planning to send a letter to every person whose information might be at risk because of the theft and will open a toll-free hotline for people to call and confirm whether their Social Security numbers or other information was exposed. Additionally, the university will hold information sessions on campus to answer individual questions about the situation, according to The Hoya.
Belson said she has been talking with the university's Office of General Counsel and Office of Risk Management about the federal and D.C. processes and procedures SETH will need to now take to inform students possibly affected by the information's exposure. She said she is also trying to investigate how SETH's boxes came to be in the hallway.
Under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, schools must destroy most student records five years after the student has graduated or was last registered at the institution. Once that deadline has passed, they are only required to keep permanent records of student academic performance, as well as financial records if the student still has a financial obligation at the university, according to policy information on the Office of the Registrar's Web site.
