The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA)
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974 (FERPA) is a Federal law which provides that the institution will maintain the confidentiality of student education records.
Wichita State University accords all the rights under the law to students who are declared independent. Those rights are: 1) the right to inspect and review the student's education records; 2) the right to request the amendment of the student's education records to ensure that they are not inaccurate, misleading, or otherwise in violation of the student's privacy or other rights; 3) the right to consent to disclosures of personally identifiable information contained in the student's education records, except to the extent that FERPA authorizes disclosure without consent; 4) the right to file with the U.S. Department of Education a complaint concerning alleged failures by Wichita State University to comply with the requirements of FERPA; and 5) the right to obtain a copy of Wichita State University's student records policy. You can obtain a copy of the policy form the Registrar's office.
No one outside the institution shall have access to, nor will the institution disclose any information from students' education records without the prior written consent of the student(s) except to personnel within the institution who have a legitimate educational interest, to persons or organizations providing students financial aid, to accrediting agencies carrying out their accreditation function, to persons in compliance with a judicial order, and to persons in an emergency in order to protect the health or safety of students or other persons. All these exceptions are permitted under the Act.
Within the Wichita State University community, only those members, individually or collectively, acting in the students' legitimate educational interests are allowed access to student education records. These members include personnel in the offices of Admissions, Registrar, Controller, Computing Center, Dean of Students, Financial Aid, Career Services, Cooperative Education, Planning, Testing, Library, College deans, academic advisors, and other administrative and academic personnel within the limitation of their need-to-know. Legitimate educational interests means 1) the information or records requested is(are) relevant and necessary to accomplishment of some task or determination; and 2) the task or determination is an employment responsibility for the inquirer or is a properly assigned subject matter for the inquirer's employment responsibility. Social Security number and student status data may be provided to other state agencies for use in detection of fraudulent or illegal claims against state monies.
To authorize the disclosure and release of financial aid information to third parties, such as a parent, students should visit wichita.edu/proxy.