An unexpected boon arrived in 1974, the year of the Kent State decision Scheuer v. Rhodes. Sens. John Warner (R-Va.) and James Buckley (Conservative-N.Y.) sponsored the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) in the hope of empowering parents to keep tabs on their kids' academics. Committees amended the bill into a codification of student privacy rights, and Steinbach got a crack at it before FERPA moved on to the Senate. When the bill passed, parents could peek into the records of their children until their 18th birthday, at which point those rights transferred to the student. But FERPA created exceptions: Schools could release records to providers of financial aid and to "appropriate officials in cases of health and safety emergencies." If a student was hit with a subpoena or legal charge, the school could peek into his criminal records. Yet college administrators and their advisers, Steinbach included, kept the champagne corked. It wasn't immediately clear what effect the law would have, outside of giving parents annual notice of their new rights.
"It was a schizophrenic time," Steinbach explains. "We were moving from segregated campuses to co-ed, affirmative action campuses. We didn't have our feet on the floor in 1974."
Meanwhile, concern about the state of campuses was spreading. In March 1977, Newsweek ran a hand-wringing exposé titled "The End of Expulsion?," which gave the supposed academic apocalypse some context: "In just ten years, most of the rules that once governed student life in loco parentis have simply disappeared. Even serious scholastic offenses, such as cheating and plagiarism, seldom incur the harsh penalties that were once automatic. Most college administrators admit that they lean over backward to avoid expelling students." The irksome rites of passage that had been mandatory -- core curricula, single-gender dorms, class attendance -- fell away.
In the 1979 case Bradshaw v. Rawlings, the U.S. Court of Appeals for the 3rd Circuit spelled out the universities' weakness. When a Delaware Valley College sophomore three years under the Pennsylvania drinking age hitched a ride from a drunk driver and was injured in a car crash, he sued the school. The court shrugged him off. "The modern American college is not an insurer of the safety of its students," it said. "Rights formerly possessed by college administrations have been transferred to students." Expectations were pointless, because "beer drinking by college students is a common experience. That this is true is not to suggest that reality always comports with state law and college rules. It does not."
The court's decision reflected the way students lived: They had a new relationship with their deans, who should treat them like the young adults they were.
How then, did the contemporary nanny university arise? Administrators who got their degrees in the 1960s had a certain idea of how students should be governed, and they found three tools for regaining control. The first involved intoxicants, including the escalating war on drugs and the mid-'80s change in the drinking age from 18 to 21. The second was an attempt to stave off liability for student mental health problems by intervening with students who were seen at risk of breakdowns. The third and most well known was a rigid enforcement of political correctness that set standards for just how rowdy students could get.
Just Say No
University administrators immediately started wringing their hands over the "kids will be kids" philosophy of Bradshaw v. Rawlings. When one of their wards was arrested, injured, or killed, whether a lawsuit resulted or not, the school felt a blow to its prestige and sense of community. Unchecked hedonism and recklessness among students increasingly free to skip classes or make their own schedules were perceived as a threat to the institution's reputation.
Brett Bokolow, manager of the National Center for Higher Education Risk Management (NCHERM), estimates that colleges have been seeking formulas to keep students out of actionable situations for 20 years. In the 1980s, they were increasingly finding themselves liable for providing services or sponsoring events that involved alcohol. After only a few legal wounds, schools sought methods to put the responsibility for drinking or drug use on the backs of students and fraternities and sororities. Two weapons fell into their laps.
As the Department of Education opened for business in 1980, an increasing number of students were turning to government aid and loans to pay for their college bills. From 1970 to 1980, federal aid to college students soared from $600 million to $4.5 billion. In 1978 Congress had passed legislation that entitled all college students to federally insured loans. Suddenly, colleges had leverage to punish students for misusing their leisure time. If they were getting money from taxpayers, they were treated like any other employee found partying on the job. Since students were making use of their loans every minute of the academic year, all of their fun was suspect, and much of the adult behavior that vexed administrators was happening on the public dime.
Colleges became willing and able to shift some burden to Greek organizations, which had grown again after a marked falloff in the Vietnam era. Many schools created incentives for fraternities and sororities to go dry, or at least disincentives for them to stay wet. In one typical action in 1988, Rutgers University, which had just banned bringing kegs into dorms, responded to a student's death by embargoing all Greek events. In 1997, after first-year student Scott Kreuger drank himself to death at a pledge event, MIT banned freshmen from fraternities. More responsibility was shifted to fraternity and sorority members. By the mid-'90s, universities had become so strict that they were rarely found liable for student sins. Instead of threatening to punish their kids if they came home late, schools simply took away the car keys. If kids somehow got themselves into trouble, it was a police matter.
Colleges found the rest of their arsenal in 1987, when Congress threatened to withhold federal transportation money from states that allowed anyone below the age of 21 to buy alcohol, with the result that 21 became the de facto national drinking age (see "Age of Propaganda" below). Across the country, the harshness many schools had formerly applied only to drug offenses began to apply to drinking as well, and the war on fraternities was ramped up. Finally, in 1998 FERPA was amended to make one provision clearer: Colleges could sidestep their students' wishes and inform parents whenever a drug or alcohol law was broken. Before that, less than 20 percent of schools had informed parents of such violations. Afterward, most of them did so.
In 2001 The Chronicle of Higher Education reviewed this phone-home policy and found great success. Reporters spotlighted the story of a University of Delaware freshman who pledged to quit drinking after police stopped him on the street for a Breathalyzer test. After he was caught, his parents began bringing him home each weekend and lecturing him on his mistakes. The student stopped drinking, but not because he worried about the effects of booze. If he was caught again, he would be suspended for a year.
For Your Own Good
Keri Krissik transferred to Stonehill College in Easton, Massachusetts, in January 1999, 10 years after she was first diagnosed as anorexic. Krissik survived a heart attack four months after arriving and finished her course work while convalescing. In September the school refused to let her back in because, according to spokesman Martin McGovern, "we couldn't monitor her." If she were allowed back in and was injured, the school could have been liable. Stonehill dearly wanted to avoid the risk.
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