Many college students face mounting stress as the semester draws to a close. But for 426 students their list of stresses got longer on Nov. 26 when their names and banner ID numbers were inadvertently e-mailed to 20 students in the history department.
Janelle Dawkns, who was among the 426 students affected, said she didn’t initially read the e-mail alerting her of the mistake.
“I thought it was a prank,” she said.
The e-mail alerting the 426 students-all of whom are planning on graduating in May of 2009-of the mistake was sent on Nov. 26 by Jay Haugen, director of enrollment management information systems. It said that the department of enrollment management would issue new banner numbers for each affected student and would pay for a replacement student ID in order to “protect each student’s privacy.”
However, this is a different procedure than just simply losing a student ID. Ann Benson, director of Parking and Card Services, said that students who lose their student ID and have a replacement printed don’t typically have a new banner ID number assigned.
Boyd Bradshaw, vice provost for enrollment management, acknowledges that this is an inconvenience for the students involved.
“For someone to find the identity of a student with a banner ID is difficult,” he said. “It’s just part of our security measures . We have had incidents on occasion where this has happened and we have followed the same procedure.”
Haugen interrupted his Thanksgiving vacation in order to alert the affected students as soon as possible, Bradshaw said.
“I’m very satisfied with the way we handled it. We do know this is an inconvenience to the students involved, but it’s for their protection,” he said.
Dawkins has taken the incident in stride, but will have to re-file her graduation paperwork under her new banner ID number.
“It hasn’t necessarily been an inconvenience. I’m just perturbed, because I have to memorize a new number,” she said
Bradshaw said his office has also contacted the 20 history department students who received the information, and he does not anticipate any more problems arising.
