University describes new rule on arrests

The University of Virginia revealed Monday new details about how it will implement a rule requiring students to say if they have been arrested - and how it intends to protect those students’ privacy.

Once a year, all UVa students will be asked to disclose any arrests or criminal convictions that occurred since they were admitted to the university, typically in April of the senior year of high school.

Under the new system, failing to disclose an arrest or conviction will be a violation of the university’s honor code that forbids students from lying, cheating or stealing. Those offenses carry a single sanction: expulsion.

Since 2004, UVa students have been required to notify the university after any arrests or convictions, but it was left to the student to know the policy and make the notification.

Now, UVa students will be prompted to disclose any arrests when they log in for the first time in the fall semester to the university’s NetBadge system that allows access to e-mail and course materials.

“The thinking behind this was: How do we make sure that people know this is the policy and their obligation to disclose arrests,” said Allen W. Groves, UVa’s dean of students.

Only a small handful of senior UVa officials, such as Groves, will have access to the arrest disclosures of students. The information, he said, will be treated as “highly confidential” and on a “strictly need-to-know basis.”

“We’re being very cautious with regards to how we plan to use and maintain this information,” Groves said.

The system is being launched in the wake of the May death of Yeardley Love, a UVa fourth-year student and lacrosse player. Love’s ex-boyfriend and fellow UVa lacrosse player George Huguely has been charged in her death.

In the days after Huguely’s arrest, it was revealed that Huguely had been arrested two years earlier in a drunken and violent confrontation with a Lexington policewoman. UVa officials have said he would have been suspended or possibly expelled had they known about the incident in 2008.

Under UVa’s new system, if a student discloses an arrest or conviction, one of the senior officials in Grove’s office will check available court records and possibly meet with the student. When appropriate, Groves said, the student might face a referral to the university’s Judiciary Committee or be required to undergo an alcohol education class.

In the most serious cases, a student’s arrest disclosure might be forwarded to UVa’s threat assessment team, a confidential panel formed after the Virginia Tech shootings to address potential threats to campus safety.

John W. Whitehead, founder of the Rutherford Institute, an Albemarle County-based civil liberties organization, said he sees no privacy problems arising from UVa’s new student arrest disclosure rule.

“Most of this stuff is already out there online,” he said. “It’s all absolutely a public record. If you’re stopped for drunken driving and you’re convicted, you can go online and see that. It’s all public information already.”

Groves, who is a lawyer, said UVa’s new policy will not violate student privacy laws because adult arrest and court records are already public. Any records generated by UVa as part of the new system, he said, would be protected by existing federal privacy laws.

Under UVa’s new notification system, underage students will also be asked to say if they have been arrested since they were admitted. While underage criminal history is generally treated as confidential, Groves said he expects the students will truthfully disclose any arrests.

“I would believe that people will err on the side of disclosure,” he said.

UVa did not base their new rule on any other university’s system. Groves said he knows of no other school that asks students each year to disclose their criminal history.

At Virginia Tech and the College of William & Mary, students must say as part of the application process if they have been arrested or convicted, but not once they are admitted as students.

“To the best of my knowledge, there is no mechanism to ask students those questions after they’re enrolled,” said Larry Hincker, Tech’s spokesman.