The Commonwealth of Virginia has passed legislation that restricts access to student contact information by the public as well as by fellow students. Virginia House Bill 1 (HB1), which takes effect July 1 as Code of Virginia section 23.1-405(C), prohibits a university from disclosing a student’s email address, physical address or telephone number under the exception in the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) for directory information or the Virginia Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) unless the student has affirmatively consented in writing to the disclosure.
On June 5, to ensure compliance with the new law, VCU Technology Services will remove all applicable student information from phonebook.vcu.edu and the people search on the VCU website. Additionally, University online applications such as Blackboard, email, room reservation systems and Service Desk will no longer provide the ability for non-employees to search for student eID and email addresses, including the auto-complete feature of email addresses currently used in many systems.
More information about this legislation is available at
go.vcu.edu/hb1
.