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Although UNM has made efforts to hasten and improve student advisement, students continue to argue that advisement practices ignore students’ rights to privacy.
UNM’s One-Stop center, which opened in Mesa Vista Hall in spring 2009, was created to allow students faster admissions, financial aid and registration advisement, all in one place. Students can receive advisement without an appointment in an open room where multiple advisers are stationed at computers and assist students with one-on-one advisement.
In September 2009, the Daily Lobo compiled a list of students’ reactions to the center shortly after it opened. In the article, former UNM student Natalie Marquez said all her questions were answered, but that she felt advisement became less personal and private.
“Before, you would go into an office and it was personal and confidential. Now, it’s just at the front desk with everyone around,” Marquez said. “It was way more personal when they had individual offices. Sometimes you do not want to talk about things like financial aid with everybody around.”
In a letter to the editor that appeared in the same issue of the Daily Lobo, former UNM student Eric Ross said he noticed the One-Stop system violated students’ privacy because he could overhear the private conversations between students and advisers.
“I overheard staff — probably to no fault of their own because they are at the mercy of the One-Stop office setup — giving out private information, and students, uncomfortably, relaying their ID numbers, birth dates, incomes, addresses, health problems, grades, etc. to the staff,” he said. “This information could easily be overheard because we have no choice but to sit right next to other students without partitions or office walls or even space to divide the conversations.”
In the letter, Ross suggested adding partitions or using offices to ensure students’ privacy is protected during advisement.
“I don’t believe that the decision-making bodies of Enrollment Management have fully thought this system through,” he said.
Complaints continue to follow One-Stop. On Aug. 23, UNM student Amber Jones said in an email to the Daily Lobo that she was displeased with the One-Stop system because the University violates the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), a federal law intended to protect student information.
“The University deliberately violates FERPA. Everyone that goes to the One-Stop stands in a makeshift line (they have no ropes, signs or number system telling students … what to do or where to stand),” she said. “Then, I’m called up by an employee to help me with my question … My question could be about records, financial aid or admissions and they are ‘supposed’ to help me.”
On several occasions, Daily Lobo reporters observed an employee standing near the entrance of One-Stop to direct students to the appropriate desk based on their needs.
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Jones said she was hesitant to speak to an adviser about financial aid because she didn’t want to discuss her personal information with other students present.
“I have a student sitting on my left and my right side and then I have the line that I just came from close behind me, which all around could hear my questions and answers from the employee discussing my very personal financial aid issues,” she said. “I would like to see UNM fix this huge FERPA violation ASAP by putting in tall barriers…”
Associate University counsel Melanie Baise said the One-Stop area doesn’t violate FERPA regulations because the law doesn’t specifically state that conversations about student records have to be done privately behind closed doors. She said the law protects personal student information, but doesn’t mandate where discussions about student information happen or how the environment should be furnished.
But Baise said the University is obligated to configure the space to ensure that student information isn’t shared with other people who might be in the area. She said students should voice concerns in a formal complaint to the Enrollment Management Division or the Office of the Registrar to ensure their concerns are being brought to the University’s attention.
“It’s the University’s responsibility to not disclose private information,” she said. “Sounds like someone needs to look at the space, someone has to take reasonable steps to ensure the University doesn’t disclose students’ information to others.”
But financial aid supervisor Raina Barnett said the open seating is not the only option students have for advisement sessions. She said students who want to have a private conversation can ask to go into one of the offices in One-Stop to speak to a financial aid adviser privately.
“At any time you can ask to go in any of the offices, and anyone who is helping you will go ahead and do that. There are at least 12 offices to go into,” she said. “We do have a couple of students who ask to do that.”
