Jordan exonerates administration
Leaves students to foot the bill for credit alert

By Nic Garcia
ngarci20@mscd.edu

Photo by Emily Varisco • varisco@mscd.edu

   

Metroís administration has concluded its investigation and has absolved itself of any blame regarding a stolen laptop that may contain personal identification information of 93,000 current and former students.

    "We are not the perpetrator of this crime," Metro President Stephen Jordan said during a March 9 public meeting.

     Now, Metroís administration will begin to re-examine, write and implement new policy to make sure a similar situation does not happen again.

     "In the interim, no studies are to be done regarding Social Security numbers (or other sensitive data) without my explicit approval," Jordan said.

     Jordan said Metroís third-party investigation team, Business Controls, Inc., has found that the work done by Associate Director of Admissions and Data Management Daniel Parks, the employee who had possession of the laptop when it was stolen, did not violate any Metro policies or state or federal law by not deleting a file with Metro student information or using the information from the project outside the scope of the Title III grant he had been working on.

     Because of this, "Metro has made the decision, that at this time, we will not pay for outside extended credit monitoring services," Jordan said.

     Despite it all, Metro officials still "strongly encourage" students to contact a credit-reporting agency and put a 90-day alert on accounts free of charge. Students may buy an extended 90-day alert if they wish to.

     Letters will be mailed out this week to all students, past and current, who are believed to have been on the list. Those students would include anyone enrolled in classes at Metro from the Fall 1996 semester to the Summer 2005 semester.

     Jordan said Parks had permission from his supervisor, then-director of admissions William Hathaway-Clark, and associate vice president of academic affairs David Conde to use the research published in a Title III Grant for a project in his masterís program at UCD. The grant investigated online course trends. The administration has learned that permission was not needed because the grant became a public document once it was made available to the college.

     Conde, however, said he was not asked permission by Parks, but was told of his intentions by the associate director and saw no problems with Parks using the information for his project.

     Phone calls to Hathaway-Clark went unreturned.

     No Social Security numbers or other private information was used in either the grant or the project. Parks used the data and created charts from the numbers he ran. The grant was completed in May of last year and the project was submitted in August, seven months before the laptop was stolen.

    The laptop may or may not have contained a document with 93,000 studentís names, Social Security numbers, addresses, birth dates and course numbers. Together, this information could be used to cause serious damage to a personís credit.

     Parks has said he does not remember whether he did or did not delete the file on the college laptop he used at home to complete the grant. The file, regardless, was not encrypted and could be accessed without a password.

   Parks, who, due to his job, had privileged access to the information, is still employed at Metro. However, his access to Banner, Metroís Web portal used to register for classes and which houses every studentís information, has been restricted.

    Parks appropriated the data from the Web portal to use in the study. Another 988 employees have access to similar student data and of those, 114 have the same high-level access Parks had, Jordan said.

    The Auraria police are working with the Denver police in the criminal investigation. Parks is not a suspect, Jordan said.

    As of press time, there was no evidence any data that may have been on the laptop had been used illegally.

    "Because this situation has received much attention, there may be phishing scams," Jordan said. "If someone calls from a credit bureau or a financial institution, do not give them your information; instead, verify the information they are providing you."

    A phishing scam is when someone tries to obtain personal information in order to commit identity fraud.

"    Iím so mad at Jordan," said Metro student Erika Phebus. "He thinks he will walk away from this neat and clean."

    Phebus is worried the issue is going to "fall by the wayside" and has begun to write her state representatives.

    "Iím floored there are no consequences for Mr. Parkís actions," she said at the meeting. "He failed in a very serious way."

    Jordan dismissed claims the school is fiscally responsible and that there was no problem with Parks working with sensitive material outside of his office. Identity theft is something we all have to deal with in this century, he said, and he pointed to the business world as precedent for people working at home.

    "This is one of the ways business is done," Jordan said. "This is the way America is working today."

    It was agreed the communication between Metroís administration and students is the SGAís biggest responsibility in the matter.

    Speaker of the Senate Jesse Samora said the SGA needs to work closely with the faculty and help keep the students informed.

   "I think we need to just direct all questions to the shared governance committee," he said. "Thatís what theyíre there for."

    Gary Lefman, an SGA shared governance committee member and senator, suggested students be told the SGA can offer assistance.

    "The larger issue is," Samora added, "that while this is very important, there is still a lot of other business going on right now. We have to remember our priorities. We owe the student body more than this."

-Josie Klemaier

Metro following in UNCfootsteps, missteps

    In January 2005, the University of Northern Colorado experienced a possible security breach, similar to the recently stolen Metro laptop.

    The UNC Department of Information Technology reported a missing backup hard drive to senior management Jan. 18, 2005.

    "We never determined for sure if the hard drive was lost or stolen." Gloria Reynolds, Director of Communications and Media Relations, said. "We went through all the garbage and everything," she said.

   The hard drive contained names, addresses, social security numbers, bank account numbers and birth dates for 150,000 employees.

    According to Reynolds, the records went back as far as 1997, and some of the employees were also students.

    "Itís not like a CD or zip drive or any kind of regular technology you or I use on our PCs," Reynolds said.

    UNC officials held the first open meeting concerning the lost hard drive on Jan. 20, 2005, two days after the hard drive was reported missing.

    "We couldnít rule out that it was stolen, so we told everyone to take the same kinds of precautions just in case," Reynolds said.

    Following the first meeting, the university held a series of meetings explaining how to put fraud alerts on credit reports.

UNC brought in an independent consultant to help determine what information was missing and to come up with procedures for being more secure in the future.

   "We wanted to be sure we knew what it was we were missing," Reynolds said.

    UNC also hired a security policy expert, who has been working methodically to make sure things are secure, according to Reynolds.

    UNC is changing its entire computer system to the Banner Information System, educational software that many universities use.

    "Weíll have a new way of doing things," Reynolds said.
-Andrea Schreine

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