UW-River Falls

Confidentiality and the Release of Personal Information

The Family and Educational Rights Privacy Act (FERPA) is a federal law that grants confidential status to documentation once Disability Services receives it, and any records the office creates about students. These kinds of confidential paperwork are kept in locked file cabinets behind locked doors when the office is closed. About seven years after students stop interacting with the office their confidential file and documentation are destroyed. Once destroyed no record remains to indicate a disability existed or that adjustments or accommodations occurred. There’s absolutely no indication on the students’ academic transcripts about any of these matters.

FERPA allows people who work for UWRF to share confidential information about a student without the student’s permission, but only when the information is needed to arrange a beneficial circumstance for the student, or to complete an essential aspect of their job. In virtually every other situation people who work at UWRF need the student’s written permission to share confidential information. That kind of permission is always needed to discuss a student’s academic issues with their parents, friends, doctors, therapists, lawyers, etc.. If a student asks Disability Services to forward a copy of his or her disability documentation someplace the office usually declines. The student is then advised to contact the expert who wrote the documentation with a request that the expert send a copy where it’s desired.