Parental notification policies, practices, and impacts in 2000 and 2002

Since the enactment of the Drug Free Schools and Communities Act Amendments of 1989, there have been several additional attempts by Congress to address the problem of alcohol abuse on college campuses. In 1 990, Congress passed the Student Right-to-Know and Campus Security Act containing a provision requiring institutions to notify students of the number of arrests for liquor law violations. In the 1998 Higher Education Amendments (HEA), Congress proposed a set of initiatives institutions should take to change the culture of alcohol consumption on college campuses. Entitled The Collegiate Initiative to Reduce Binge Drinking and Illegal Consumption, this particular section of HEA was not law, but only a resolution expressing the sense of Congress. HEA also renamed the Campus Security Act as the Jeanne Clery Disclosure of Campus Security Policy and Campus Crime Statistics Act and expanded the data regarding alcohol violations that institutions were required to report. Prior to the 1998 Amendments, institutions were mandated only to keep and distribute data on the number of arrests for alcohol violations. HEA broadened that requirement to include persons referred for campus disciplinary action for liquor law violations. Finally, HEA included changes to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA) to allow institutions to notify the parents of students under the age of 21, if those students violated Federal, State, or local laws or any rule or policy of the institution governing the use or possession of alcohol. This is now commonly referred to as parental notification