The Nation: Open Sesame Street

It all began innocently enough. In an attempt to eliminate abuses of personal files in grade schools — such as the note citing “homosexual tendencies” that was allegedly inserted in the files of one nine-year-old after he hugged a classmate — Congress passed a law last month allowing parents and students over 18 to examine school records. The so-called Buckley Amendment on student rights was named for the bill’s sponsor, Conservative Senator James Buckley of New York.

But the good intentions of the legislators loosed a storm of protest and confusion in colleges and universities over the propriety of showing parents or their children a student’s psychiatric, medical and counseling records as well as recommendations of him written by former teachers and employers.

Harvard copied some confidential letters and sent the originals back to their authors before permitting students to riffle through the sanitized files. The University of Pennsylvania is putting some admissions material in storage.

Georgetown University, like many schools, is taking the names of students who want to see their files and promising a reply when the 45-day grace period provided in the law expires on Jan. 2.

In the meantime, educators hope that they will get some relief in an amendment by Senators Buckley and Claiborne Pell of Rhode Island to clarify ambiguities in the law. The amendment will deny students access to parents’ financial statements; some parents are just old-fashioned enough not to want to disclose the family’s finances to their children. The Buckley-Pell clarifications will also guarantee the privacy of letters of recommendation and other confidential materials — but only those already in the files. Future recommenders will simply have to shape their letters with the knowledge that their subjects may read them.