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ASU takes step back from student disclosure idea
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ASU officials have disavowed a campus safety proposal that could have given the university access to students' private mental health information. The university "is not requiring - and will not consider requiring - such disclosure," Leah Hardesty, an Arizona State University spokeswoman, wrote in a media release Friday.
Since late October, a university committee has reviewed security recommendations from around the country aimed at preventing future shootings at higher education institutions.
In the past 10 months, there have been two mass killings - at Virginia Tech in April and at Northern Illinois University earlier this month - that caused administrators to scramble for ways to predict when a student might pose a threat.
One of those recommendations, from the National Association of Attorneys General, called for changes to federal medical and student privacy laws that would provide universities with some students' psychological health histories. That information is now confidential.
ASU President Michael Crow said his university will not consider any measure that requires students to hand over details about their mental health as part of the admissions process.
After news reports detailed ASU's consideration of student disclosures last week, many in the mental health community criticized the university.
Crow said several people had "misinterpreted" the measures ASU is discussing.
The university has only been researching ways to have a "full discussion" within ASU when a student might be a danger to himself or to others on campus, Crow said.
However, Arizona Attorney General Terry Goddard said last week that he supports some form of mandatory disclosure when students are taking psychotropic drugs, used to treat illnesses like schizophrenia. The two most recent university shooters had both been prescribed medications from that family of drugs.
Goddard said Crow had initially pitched that idea during a conversation they had last year. The attorneys general's recommendation sought "to provide for sharing of information with schools and colleges that goes beyond the current 'imminent danger' exception," records from the ASU committee show.
That committee was originally supposed to have its final report finished on Dec. 10. Terri Shafer, a university spokeswoman, said that deadline has been moved to next week.
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