"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."