All student, faculty, and staff personal and academic information
is private and confidential, and is protected by various state
and federal laws. Buffalo State employees must, by law,
protect the privacy of this information.
Failure to protect personal and academic information may result
in legal action against offending employees. Employees accused
of failure to protect confidential information that results in
harm to an individual may not be covered by the Public Officer’s
Law, and therefore not defended by New York State.
Examples of personal information that must be kept confidential:
Social Security number, health information, disability status,
etc. Faculty and staff must ensure that information contained on
the employee change form is kept confidential.
Examples of academic information that must be kept confidential:
grades, class schedule, student ID number, etc. Faculty and
staff members may not post test scores or grades using any
portion of a student’s name, Social Security number, or student
ID number. Faculty and staff must refrain from providing
students’ parents with information related to their student’s
academic performance or other personal information, unless given
permission to do so by the student.
For more information:
State and Federal Laws:
Additional information about safeguarding sensitive information
can be found at Buffalo State’s
Internal
Control web site.
Questions regarding privacy of the employee change form,
employee contracts, official employee files, etc.:
Susan Earshen, associate vice president, Human Resource
Management, ext. 3042
Questions regarding privacy of student information and FERPA:
Mark Bausili, registrar, ext. 4907
Questions regarding health information and HIPAA:
Rock Doyle, assistant director, medical systems, Weigel Health
Center, ext. 6711
Questions regarding legal liability and any legal action against
the college or an employee:
James Thor, associate vice president and comptroller, ext. 4312
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Source: Bulletin, Vol. 54, No. 20, February 12, 2009
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