<p>After the murder of a University of Virginia senior last year and the subsequent arrest of a fellow student with an rrest record that was unknown campus officials, the university considered performing background checks on all enrolled students. Instead, however, UVA will ask its students to self-report all infractions each fall before gaining access to campus e-mail and course information.</p>
<p>From today’s Chronicle of Higher Education </p>
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<p>Do you think that college students who have been arrested for crimes during the previous year will honestly report their infractions? Will this new practice really result in making a campus safer or will it simply create more hassles during a hectic time when students get locked out of the system due to technical snafus, even if they’ve tried to enter a “No” reply?</p>
<p>It saves money. Besides, lightning isn’t suppose to strike twice. They’re just doing something as oppose to nothing, which might p1ss people off.</p>
<p>Especially since UVA is a public university. I wonder if any student will challenge the legality of the survey. Although I have never been arrested, I would refuse to answer and contact the ACLU or such because I really don’t think that is legal. I understand the issue at hand, but don’t all students already have to be medically cleared and disclose any convictions or academic disciplinary actions? It seems like a trample on civil liberties. I know people that have been arrested and had all charges dropped, and people who were arrested for petty violations such as underages or trespassing. I think disclosing that information means UVA is assuming that you are potentially dangerous, and that you will be blackmarked by the administration. I would be very upset if my school instituted a policy, and would research whether or not I could challenge it’s constitutionality (I go to an OOS private).</p>
<p>I guess UVA has to do something, but tragedies happen and unfortunately you can’t always prevent them. What happened was horrible, but I don’t think they are responding correctly. The only question should be if you have ever been convicted of a crime, and if so, what.</p>
<p>There are good reasons why it’s illegal to ask about rior arrests. It mainly lays in due process: we have a court system to make sure (as much as we reasonably can) that nobody is falsely held responsible for a crime that they did not commit.</p>
<p>If you simply ask about arrests, you’re skipping all the vetting that goes on in the process. For example, you can get an arrest on your record if the police simply misidentifies you for someone else, arrests you, and then lets you free the next day (hopefully with apologies) when they nab the correct person. It doesn’t matter that you did nothing – it’s an arrest and it’s on record because it happened.</p>
<p>Moreeverm you can get arested with just the opinion of one police officer. Police arew humans and humans make mistakes. If an arrest is really enough to draw a conclusion, we could save so many taxpayer dollars by throwing out the court system.</p>
<p>If my university asked me that question, I’d refuse to answer, call up the ACLU, and start filling out transfer applications.</p>
<p>They don’t have any right whatsoever to ask if you’ve simply been arrested. Arrested has nothing to do with being guilty or not guilty, as the above poster pointed out.</p>
<p>Asking if you’ve been convicted seems legit to me, but I really know little about the law so that’s just based on my own personal opinion.</p>