Hello,
First time boarding school family and I’m wondering if others have opted out of having their child’s name listed online. I’ve noticed that many boarding schools list students’ names and hometowns on their sports team rosters which is publicly available. My child has a very uncommon first and last name and it makes me a little uncomfortable having their identifying information out there publicly, especially when they’re living away from home.
Have others done this? And does the school remember to not name the student in social media posts and such?
Ty!
I note in general, schools where some of the kids are trying to be recruited athletes may put rosters and stats online. That doesn’t mean you have to participate, of course, but I think it is a large part of the explanation for why that has become somewhat common at a variety of high schools.
I’d like to believe if you told them you didn’t want your kid’s personal information published anywwhere, the schools would never make a mistake, but realistically, things happen. Like if your kid does something noteworthy and identifies themselves, or is identified by a club officer, or so on, I could see it slipping through in some way.
I guess my point is you might want to talk to your kid about taking an active role in trying to prevent accidental publication.
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Thanks, this is helpful! I will talk to the school and our kid about it.
If your child places well in a sports event, it is almost inevitable to prevent their name from being publicized. The school might be able to implement some measures internally, but at the league level, it could prove to be a challenge.
In my experience, you should receive (or ask if it is not in your admission’s packet) a form to fill out that indicates you do not want your child’s name or photo to appear in any school communication including your home address and contact info.
For privacy reasons families do opt-out and schools should be well versed in this request. Other families use alternate names for the parents (and child’s last name) to help with privacy in the age of Google.
For college, our daughter was a athlete and the school put a lot on line in the bio section for all the sports. After many complaints of random unrelated people tracking down the athlete and/or parent (Link-in plus other online platforms), the school scrubbed the bios down and now omit parent name and other personal information about the athlete.
Your request is not uncommon.
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I believe the wording is more along the line of whether you grant use of their image… There’s a whole stack of permissions!
I gave permission, but my kid prefers to be low profile. So kiddo befriended the people most likely to take pictures and asked to be blocked out, when possible.
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