The Board of Regents voted Aug. 12 to change University policy to comply with the Inspection of Public Records Act, ending months of deliberation on the issue.
The IPRA is a state law that says all documents created by a public body such as UNM are eligible for inspection. Exceptions include medical records, which are protected from inspection under federal law, and student records, which are protected under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
UNM employees were concerned about identity thieves inspecting their records.
The regents received more than 170 comments from the UNM community regarding the IPRA law, many requesting that employees at least be notified if their records were requested.
The regents passed a policy change that will allow UNM employees to "opt out" of making some of their personal information accessible.
"As with any situation, there was a bit of compromise," said Carol Stephens, the manager of University policies, who was a member of the group President David Schmidly appointed to consider the issue.
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Dahlia Dorman, student regent, said the board did its best to work with faculty on the issue.
"We did work really hard to try and make sure (UNM employees) had their privacy protected," she said.
The board also discussed the state of child care on campus.
Representatives from the Graduate and Professional Student Association reported that more than 600 parents with children are on a waiting list for child care at UNM.
GPSA asked the regents to consider increasing child care facilities to make room for students on the waiting list.
Chris Ramirez, GPSA president, said the lack of child care affects everyone on campus, but it is particularly a problem for graduate students.
"Currently, the state law prohibits graduate students from receiving child care subsidies," Ramirez said.
He said the need for child care extends to UNM's branch campuses as well.
The GPSA proposed a $150,000 budget to plan for an expansion and put together a Child Care Task Force to help identify which issues are important to students with children.
The current child care facility has a Children, Youth and Families Department five-star rating, said Lissa Knudsen, GPSA council chair. Knudsen is also a member of the UNM Child Care Task force.
Knudsen said she is concerned the expansion will not cover all the extra costs and concerns such as more playground and administrative space.
"The current parents will recognize that their quality of child care is going to go down and they won't be on board. We are trying to protect the University from that kind of a response," she said.
The regents didn't vote on Ramirez's proposal and said they'd address it at their next meeting.
