From: twpierce@unix.amherst.edu (Tim Pierce)
Subject: Admission Records Shredded at Amherst
Organization: Amherst College, Amherst MA
Date: Thu, 1 Oct 1992 00:26:03 GMT

From the Amherst _Student_ (the weekly newspaper), Wednesday, Sept.
30, 1992:

	      DEAN REYNOLDS ORDERS SHREDDING OF RECORDS

First-year students anxious to find out just what admission
personnel wrote on the margins of their applications are out of
luck, according to Dean of Admission Jane Reynolds.  Reynolds and
her staff have shredded the portions of first-year students'
applications that contained subjective comments.  The shredding
is a response to a U.S. Department of Education ruling last April
that indicated that students have a right to see comments written
on applications if the college keeps them.

Students in the sophomore through senior classes, however, may
request to see comments written on their applications, Reynolds
said, because the time that shredding all the documents would
require is not worth the effort.

The ruling was in response to a complaint filed by Joshua
Gerstein, a former editor of _The Harvard Crimson_, who appealed
to the Department of Education when denied access to his
admission files.  The department ruled that under the Family
Education Rights and Privacy Act, which grants students access to
all their academic transcripts and records, colleges are legally
obliged to disclose all parts of the application at a student's
request.

Reynolds and Harvard Dean of Admission Marlyn Lewis both said
that the new rules were unlikely to drastically affect the
admission process itself.  In a survey conducted by _The
Chronicle of Higher Education_, 83 percent of private colleges
reported that they plan to continue to collect subjective
comments on applications.  In her survey response, Reynolds said
Amherst also intends to continue.

Lewis, meanwhile, said that Harvard would also keep collecting
comments but then shred them, because the ruling "forced us to
re-think what kind of documents we keep where."

The document in question at Amherst is a single sheet of paper on
which admission personnel provide numerical evaluations of
applicants and explain their reasoning in brief sentences.
Reynolds said that the document, which she calls "the yellow
sheet," provides an important summary of an application and
facilitates communication among admission personnel.

In coming years, Reynolds said that admission personnel will
shred the subjective portion of the evaluation sheet after the
process has ended.  Lewis said that her office has removed the
reader sheets from student files that are sent to students'
advisors.

Some students said they felt they had a right to see the comments
on their applications.  "If we bared our souls in our
applications, we have a right to know what the school thought,"
said Amanda Botticello '95.

Other Amherst students said they do not want to see the comments,
and many worry that admission officers might not write candid
evaluations if they had to worry that a student might someday see
their comments.  "There's just no point to it," said Stephen
Hurley '96.  "It could only hurt the admissions process."

Reynolds said her decision reflects Amherst's commitment to keep
the admission process as honest and candid as possible, and to
ensure that "the decisions made keep the institution in mind."
She said she does not want to complicate an already intricate
process by forcing admission officers to write "cryptically" or
to "soften their prose in anticipation of another possible
audience, the student."

When the Education Department first made its ruling in the
Gerstein case last semester, Reynolds said that pending a review
of the ruling by the College's lawyers, there was no indication
that the ruling applied to any school other than Harvard, and she
denied requests from two _Student_ reporters to see the comments
written about them.

Yesterday, after initial confusion, workers at the admission
office finally told a sophomore _Student_ reporter that she would
have to wait two days to see subjective comments that had been
written on her application and then could only see them in the
presence of an admission officer.  She had previously been
referred to the Dean of Students' Office, which then told her to
return to the Admission Office.

In an interview last year, Gerstein said that he began seeking
the comments in order to see if admission officers used racial
and ethnic information in their evaluation of candidates.
Harvard had, at the time, been suspected of discriminating
against Asian American applicants.  In light of the records'
destruction, Gerstein had suggested that admission officers may
have something to hide.

The shredding of the documents is not to protect the admission
officers, Reynolds said.  The comments, she said, are "critical
and well reasoned," and do not focus on issues like race or
ethnicity. The officers also do not use the sheets as a chance to
be glib or humorous at the expense of a student.

"We open the folder looking to admit this student," Reynolds
stressed.

Lewis agreed, adding, "No one piece of information can keep a
student out or let a student in.  We try to assemble a whole
patchwork of information to tell us about each student.  The
reader sheet aids in this process."  Lewis said that the sheet
contains no new information about a student.

After the subjective comments on the application have been
destroyed, the Harvard Office of Admission will still turn the
application materials themselves over to the Dean of Freshmen for
use in advising, just as Amherst does.  Lewis said that essays
can be "useful in advising."

Reynolds said she would advise sophomores, juniors, and seniors
not to see the comments in their admission files.  She said that
the comments are candid, and that although the majority are
positive, some are not.  Students should ask themselves whether
they really want to see the information about themselves,
Reynolds said.

In an interview, Reynolds produced an actual "yellow sheet,"
after having blocked all names and identifiers from the entire
application.  The sheet includes a sticker containing testing and
other information from the Educational Testing Service, a space
for other information about a student and an area in which
admission officers can write candid comments.  For example, one
comment read, "Essays show independence as a thinker.  An
intelligent voice," and another comment indicated that a student
had performed better at one high school than at another.

Most of the material on the sheet is not new information,
Reynolds said.  For example, information on a student's class
rank, athletic history, prizes, or relation to Amherst alumni can
be found in other portions of the application.

-- 
____ Tim Pierce                / "You are just naive and repressed because
\  / twpierce@unix.amherst.edu /  penis envy is here and it's now and it's
 \/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) /  all around you." -- Neal C. Wickham


-- 
____ Tim Pierce                / "You are just naive and repressed because
\  / twpierce@unix.amherst.edu /  penis envy is here and it's now and it's
 \/ (BITnet: TWPIERCE@AMHERST) /  all around you." -- Neal C. Wickham
Newsgroups: alt.comp.acad-freedom.talk