Will my parents find out about my conduct case?
Housing will not notify anyone else—including your parents (yes, even if they are paying)—about your conduct in the residence halls. Your conduct case is considered an educational record, which is protected under FERPA. You would need to sign a FERPA waiver to have a support person (e.g., a parent) attend your resolution meeting and speak with us about it.
The Office of the Dean of Students does work in conjunction with housing to notify emergency contacts in extreme cases related to a student’s well-being, which may constitute an exception to FERPA.
Please note that if your parent pays your student billing account (tuition, fees, room and board, etc.), they will see any fees, fines, or damages charged to your account related to your conduct record. If they call or email us about these, we will be unable to disclose the nature of them, so that could put you in an awkward position.
Can I find out what happened to the person I reported for violating policy?
No, housing will not disclose the findings of an investigation to another party, nor will we share the outcomes or sanctions applied if they were found in violation. This can be very frustrating as it means sometimes people will report something and then never hear anything about the situation to provide closure.
I heard something bad about a hall-mate and now I’m worried. Can you tell me whether it’s true?
Just as you would want (and be entitled to) privacy with your own conduct record, the university protects the rights of all students to have due process in facing any allegations of misconduct. If you are concerned about a community member, you can always report your concern to ensure it has been officially documented. If there is no official concern documented, the university is not able to pursue investigation of that concern or adjudicate any alleged misconduct.
Housing does not support any form of vigilante justice and strongly discourages rumormongering or discussion of unverified allegations against individuals with uninvolved parties. Please know that the university takes all reports seriously and if there is ever a viable threat or safety concern in our residential community, steps would be taken to mitigate it and protect our residents even before a resident’s due process.
Do I have the right to request my records?
You may request redacted copies of any incident reports in your conduct record and can at any time request we resend correspondence from a conduct case. To request these records, please email housingconduct@uoregon.edu. Housing conduct records are retained for seven years from the incident date.
If you are searching for a conduct verification for an application or background check, you may instead request a Dean’s Certificate from the Office of Student Conduct and Community Standards.
How can I make it so you can talk to my parents about _____?
If you wish to give consent for housing to speak with someone besides you for any reason, you can email housing@uoregon.edu or housingconduct@uoregon.edu to request a FERPA waiver. This email should come from your UO email address and must be submitted by the student, not a parent or friend.
Once you request a FERPA waiver, Housing staff will make it available to you on your My Housing portal. You will need to complete a waiver for each individual you consent for housing to speak with, and you must specify what you give consent for us to disclose. For example, if you filled out a FERPA waiver for us to speak with your father about a roommate conflict, but then your mother called about a billing charge, we could not talk to her about it. Be specific and as thorough as possible. FERPA waivers do not work interdepartmentally, so if you already have a Release of Information (ROI) or FERPA waiver in place with another office on campus, it does not apply to any other office.