__Students may now omit address in campus listing__
Students will now have the option of choosing not to have their local address appear in the campus directory. Senate chair Matt Beato ’09 and Student Assembly President Zach Pilchen ’09 decided to offer this option after learning that the city obtained the names of 38 students in six off-campus houses and served them with compliance notices Jan. 31 through the campus directory.
p. “We found at two houses [126 Braxton Court and 100 Chandler Court] an exact correlation between the names that were in the student directory and the names that were on the compliance notice,” Beato said. “So, anyone who was in the student directory with their address listed was on the compliance notice and anyone who was not, was not. This created a strong idea that maybe the student directory was being used as a source to find out who was violating the three-person-to-a-house rule.”
p. After learning this information, Beato and Pilchen felt it was important to change the rule in order to protect students.
p. “The College needs to find a balance between wanting to know where everyone lives for emergency contact purposes, but not having students living in fear of being evicted because they’re being truthful about where they live,” Pilchen said.
p. Beato talked with Vice President for Student Affairs Sam Sadler about creating the option for students to choose not to have their local address included in the campus directory.
p. “I made the decision because … I think our culture has a heightened concern, and should, about how personal information is portrayed in the public arena. And because it is easy for people to get copies of our directory, give them to other people, etc., giving people the option of whether to print that information that allows others to find them so easily,” Sadler said.
p. After speaking with Beato, Sadler spoke with the College’s legal counsel to confirm the legality of allowing students to opt out of publishing one type of information without opting out of publishing any other.
p. He then took the proposal to President Gene Nichol, who approved it.
p. “I think if you didn’t have this [change], you’d have a lot more students lying about their address,” Beato said.
p. Sadler sent an e-mail to new freshmen and transfer students Aug. 7 informing them of the new option.
p. The website where students can withhold their local address from the campus directory is: www.wm.edu/it/bill/index.cfm. Students must log in and select the “Printed Phone Directory Info” option on the left.