ACUHO-I News Blog

Editor’s Note: In the July+August 2010 issue of the Talking Stick magazine, we asked members to discuss how they try to harmoniously blend international and local students living in their residence halls. The conversation, however, overflowed the pages. What follows is the full, unedited text. Participating in this conversation are Rebecca Chan, director of the Student Residence Office at the City University of Hong Kong in China; Jack Gibbons,  associate director for the Office of Residential Life at the University of California, Los Angeles; Janice Robinson, director of residence life at the University of British Columbia in Vancouver, Canada; and Kristin M. Hunger, residence life coordinator for the Pollock Halls of Residence at the University of Edinburgh in Scotland.

Rebecca Chan: City University is located in the city of Hong Kong, and we have 3,000 on-campus student residence places. We are building 700 more which will be completed in 2011-12. In the undergraduate halls, we have been accommodating all non-local students (international students, students from mainland China, and exchange students) on campus. The number of non-local students has been increasing in the past few years, and it is becoming a problem to accommodate them all. So, starting from students admitted in 2009, we only guarantee non-local students a two-year accommodation in on-campus residences; this way we can adjust students’ and parents’ expectations beforehand. Nevertheless, we are trying our very best to keep students on campus as long as we can.

We do not intend to place all non-local students in residence halls, since this might neglect the needs of local students (students from Hong Kong). We have a policy of maintaining a reasonable ratio between local and non-local students in residence halls, an arrangement that facilitates intercultural communication and learning among students; non-local students will get to know and live with local people and vice versa, which is ultimately beneficial to all. At this moment, the reasonable ratio is 50:50. So in practice, for a typical undergraduate hall of 300 students, 150 will be local students, and the other 150 will come from either mainland China or overseas.

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Conducting background checks on prospective students is an occasional topic of conversation on ACUHO-I’s forums and listserv. Most institutions don’t do it, usually for a variety of reasons–logistics, expense and doubts about efficacy–but a few do. And many are often curious about the process and usefulness of the results. So when I saw this story on Inside HigherEd on conducting background checks on potential students, I thought of y’all.

Inside HigherEd’s article is based on a panel discussion that took place at the National Association of College and University Attorneys annual meeting. In addition to the  complications mentioned above,the possibility of creating an unwelcome atmosphere for students–either those with criminal histories who intend to stay on the straight-and-narrow, or law-abiding students who simply feel uncomfortable with the privacy issues involved.

On the panel was Barmak Nassirian, associate executive director of the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers. Nassirian discussed an AACRAO survey on backgrounding: While 66% of respondents reported collecting some information on arrests, convictions and crimes, only about 6% of those conduct background checks. A representative of the University of North Carolina at Wilmington said that school only requests background checks from a minority of students whose applications “raise red flags.” The students pay the $20 fee.

Some on the panel wondered if future behavior can be determined by background checks. People change rapidly in their teens and twenties, and young adults are known for making stupid mistakes. Most will never repeat those mistakes again. Also, some information on criminal background is self-reported, which limits its reliability.

Does your institution conduct background checks? Has it been considered? What’s the reasoning for doing so–or not?