On Tuesday, students across the university had personal information, including their citizenship status, accidentally sent to other New School students.
A staffer accidentally sent a “small group of students” a document showing other students’ name, student ID number, citizenship status, email address, and course and hold information, according to university administrators.
It wasn’t immediately clear how many students’ information was leaked or how many students it was leaked to.
The document is a type of report advisers regularly maintain to keep track of their advisees’ registration status for the upcoming semester “so that they can reach out to their advisees to offer assistance appropriately,” according to Rachael Ritchie, director of Student Success.
“This was a mistake and not done maliciously,” Ritchie said.
Emails from Alina Baboolal, Associate University Registrar, alerted affected students. Baboolal said that the incident “happened because of an internal mistake and was not part of a system breakdown or breach.”
An earlier version of Baboolal’s email, received by some students, did not include citizenship status as part of the released information.
In response to student inquiries about why citizenship status was included, representatives for the university said that the information is available to authorized personnel “so that advisors can identify international students who must be enrolled full-time to maintain their visa status. The citizenship data included in this report was all self-reported by students, usually through the Common Application, and only identifies status as Domestic, International, Undeclared or Permanent Resident.”
Baboolal specified in the email that students’ social security numbers, birthdates, and financial information were not exposed. A representative for The New School added that students do not need to change their passwords, as “none of the information allows for access to students’ accounts.”
Students who received the email were asked to delete it, according to Ritchie, who did not elaborate on any effort to ensure that students are not still able to access the information. In a statement from the university, administrators said that none of the students who had received the email had forwarded it.
The New School had “already taken immediate and corrective action, and will also augment a training program for employees,” Baboolal said in the email.
Photo by Julia Himmel.
Anna is the Features Editor for the Free Press. She is a senior at Lang, majoring in Journalism + Design and minoring in Politics.
