Most students take their constitutional right to privacy for granted, assuming that their email and telephone conversations, student records, residences and even M-card photos are private. Others are made acutely aware of the importance of privacy: Victims of stalking and sexual violence, political activists and victims of racial profiling all rely on our constitutional guarantee to privacy in their daily lives. The University, hopefully through negligence, has failed to enact effective policies to protect students" privacy. As an example, currently, the University has no clear policy preventing administrators from reading students" e-mail, and no way for students to file complaints if they believe their constitutional right to privacy has been violated.

The Student Rights Commission of the Michigan Student Assembly has undertaken a review of privacy issues at the University, and we have concluded that in many areas, the University has neglected to address privacy concerns. We believe the administration must address the privacy of student records, students" e-mail and computer files and M-card photos because all are loosely protected at best.

This is not a new issue. Faculty and students have been concerned about the weak and non-existent policies for years. The University"s faculty senate created a Civil Liberties Board in 1966 to protect the civil liberties of students, faculty and staff. In 1999, that body created a sub-committee on privacy, to investigate how the University might better protect the privacy of University faculty and students.

In 2000, after more than a year of meetings, the Civil Liberties Board published the "Civil Liberties Board Report of Privacy and Confidentiality" a document that criticized the University"s Standard Practice Guide policies, identifying five areas of concern dealing with electronic and other privacy issues. They asked the University to consider creating special Privacy Oversight and Complaint Resolution Committees. This report has been ignored. On Sept. 25 2001, the Daily reported that University President Lee Bollinger and the administration had completely ignored the report, and that the faculty senate had drafted a letter to "draw Bollinger"s attention to their concerns." ("Bollinger asked to respond to faculty concerns, requests," 9/25/01) The administration ignored the letter.

Privacy seems to be something the administration only applies to itself: Resident advisers are not informed that their residents can legally refuse to let them into their rooms unless they have a warrant, or have probable cause a crime is being committed while the administration operates under an almost total blanket of secrecy. The Fleming Administration Building"s dumpster is sealed under steel bulkheads, and they carefully resist divulging sensitive information exploiting every nuance in the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA), a law making government records public.

Last year, the administration, the Department of Public Safety and the Ann Arbor Police apparently colluded to crush the "Naked Mile" people from these three groups were on an e-mail list hosted by the university called milerun@umich.edu. The University spent thousands of dollars to plaster the campus with posters discouraging students from running. Yet a Freedom of Information Act request for e-mail sent to the e-mail group they used to coordinate the effort came up with a press releases and innocuous congratulatory e-mail: Apparently the rest were exempt from scrutiny, and they claimed they fell under the clause protecting passwords, keys, locks and security procedures under FOIA. After the Naked Mile debacle last year, students used e-mail to try to organize a second, "secret" Naked Mile. Ann Arbor Police and Department of Public Safety officers flooded the area where the run was to begin, raising the specter of e-mail privacy for many students. While they may have heard about the plans legitimately, it raised the issue: Does the University read students" e-mail? If they do not, are their policies to ensure that they will not in the future?

Currently, there is no policy that unambiguously protects the privacy of all students" e-mail and computer files stored or transmitted on the University"s network. The Standard Practice Guide the set of regulations applying to faculty and staff at the university contains a brief entry on the privacy of e-mail and data, saying that "personal electronic mail is considered private to the fullest extent permitted by law." However, it is unclear if this policy includes student e-mail, since the guide only applies to staff. Also, the only federal law governing e-mail has proven an ambiguous protection of privacy at best: The Electronic Communications Privacy Act was written in 1986, and although protects e-mail in transit, it allows businesses and Internet service providers to read their employees" and client"s e-mail freely.