Leroy Rooker is the Perpetrator - his phone is 202 732-1807

[Gordon Cook <cook () path net>]

Well I have obtained a fax of the article from the Raleigh News and Observer.
Buy grant Parsons, staff writer, doesn't say anything about AP.  Maybe AP
picked it up from there?

direct quote from the text of the article:

The issue came up when an archivist at Penn State University decided earlier
this year to make undergraduate honors theses available in the library.  He
asked Federal officials whether they would be allowed under the Federal
Education Rights and Privacy Act.  He also asked whether there was any
difference between undergraduate theses and masters and doctoral theses.  The
answer to both questions was a firm no.  "Both are directly related to a
student, and both are maintained by an educational agency," said LeRoy Rooker,
the Director of the Departments Family Policy Compliance Office.  Thus they
are not pure research but private records.  They should not be made available
to the public he said. 

The law is as old as FERPA which was adopted in the 1970s," Rooker said in a
telephone interview.  "But the interpretation is new as of May."  It seems no
one ever asked before, so the time-honored practice of making theses available
was never questioned, he said.  Rooker said he's only interpreting the law as
written, with a very broad definition of "educational record."  To comply with
his ruling, he said schools can have curernt students sign waivers, take the
names of students of the theses, or track down their authors and get
permission.  "What we're saying is that schools need to change their way of
doing business," he said.  "they need to take a look and say, "If we are not
doin this now, we need to start doing it."  Rooker said his agency won't be
patrolling the universities for theses abuse, but he will act if he recives
complaints.

end of quote

I have talked to some contacts of my own in the university library community.
They say that Mr. Rooker will be ignored.

By the way I just called a contact at the Dept of ED in Washington and
obtained Rooker's phone number (202) 732 1807.  List readers may want to call
him and tell him what a fine job he is doing.... :-(
With pointy headed bureaucrats like this protecting us, it's high time we
abolish this neaderthal agency

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Gordon Cook, Editor Publisher:  COOK Report on Internet -> NREN
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