Last week, I saw a copy of the Iowa State Daily that somehow got through the wall the Tribune put up to keep it from my side of town.

Anyway, I read Sarah Leonard’s Oct. 28 column, “The blanket of oppression covers every student,” and while I agree that letting a university call your parents when you’re caught with a beer is a bad idea, Ms. Leonard does appear to have a warped view of “privacy.”

While your relationship with your parents can rightly be considered your “personal business,” your criminal activities, if any, are not.

See the police blotter or the six o’clock news for details.

Court and arrest records are open and are routinely published in your paper and others.

Also, it’s not just those five deaths in Virginia which are creating a crackdown on student drinking.

It’s also a death in lowa City; a death at MIT; recent riots in Michigan, Colorado, and Pennsylvania; three riots and one murder at Veishea since 1988; a recent homecoming riot in Cedar Falls; a near riot after the Iowa-Wisconsin game; another “disturbance” in Ames just before last year’s Veishea; a l9-year-old falling out of a second-story window during a fraternity party last weekend in Council Bluffs. Stop me any time.

At the same time, students don’t seem to vote in large numbers.

When you’re seen as voting too little and drinking too much, that’s when the administration, the City Council, the Legislature and Congress start passing laws against you, not all of which are smart.

Calling mommy and daddy is not the solution.

However, the Buckley Amendment — that sweeping 1974 privacy law which keeps your university records confidential — needs to be changed.

By closing all disciplinary proceedings, even for criminal behavior, the Buckley Amendment actually helps students to escape public accountability for crime.

It also provides the ISU administration with the perfect cover for unfair treatment of students, which is why trials in the “real world” are open to the public.

Rather than legislate your family relationship, what Congress should do is throw open the closed doors of university courts and make all disciplinary records for criminal activities public.

A student’s academic records should remain private; they’re really nobody’s business but yours.

But crime is public and the Buckley Amendment needs to be amended to reflect that.

If Congress’ issue truly is personal responsibility, public records would go a lot farther than a call to mommy and daddy.

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Dave Lineweaver

Alumnus

Ames