Should colleges conduct criminal background checks on new students? The University of North Carolina is considering doing just that after a two UNC-Wilmington students were killed by fellow students (one was shot to death by an ex-boyfriend, another was raped and strangled by a friend). Both murderers lied on their applications when asked whether they had criminal records, the one concealing a prior conviction for felony sexual assault, the other concealing a misdemeanor conviction for larceny. The question is being debated here.

This reminds me of a media controversy in the mid 90s about a student who had just been admitted to Harvard, and, who, it was subsequently discovered, had murdered her mother a few years earlier.

As I recall, the fact that she had killed her mother (and not her father) stymied the efforts of campus feminists to present her as an heroic surviver of partriarchal oppression (like her near-contemporary, Lorena Bobbitt). This was also about the same time that a male student at Harvard was being expelled for allegedly date-raping a female student (this was later shown to be groundless, but he was finished at Harvard anyway).

I believe the murderer was admitted, but I don't know whether she graduated or what she majored in.

As a resident of Wilmington and part-time employee of UNCW's library, I think there are a couple of issues here.

Firstly: the local rag, the Star-News, wrote an article after the first murder profiling Christen Naujoks to make a case regarding criminal background checks. Naujoks' ex-boyfriend had been admitted to UNCW despite an (unknown to the university, until the Star uncovered it) history of sexual assault. When the article ran he was expelled for lying on his application. A few days later he killed Naujoks, and the Star has taken a little heat for running the original article against the protests of Naujoks' mother, who was worried the ex-boyfriend would retaliate. So I think part of the paper's constant harping regarding background checks comes from a feeling that, were it to back down on the issue, it would be admitting that it erred in running the original piece.

Secondly, the harping on this issue is partly to distract attention from the incompetence of the university police, who truly botched the first murder (the one which occurred on campus). The victim's father called them repeatedly after getting a call from the perpetrator saying that he'd murdered her; it was most of a day before he was able to get them to actually check her dorm to see if she was, in fact, dead.

I worry about giving the university access to this kind of information. It's easy for administrators to claim that only violent crimes will be held against students, but who's to say how the knowledge of an underage drinking citation or something similar will be used? Will faculty have access to this information? Of course, criminal records are public information in the first place.

Wouldn't that be discrimination against behavior-challenged students? Shouldn't felon-americans be granted admission in proportion to their numbers in (or out of) society at large, regardless of intelligence or ambition? Seriously, if the universities abandoned the notion of handing out admissions based on group criteria instead of on academic merit, much if not all of this problem would go away. There is no reason for criminal background checks (I am not a lawyer, but I presume that it is reasonable for a university to expect an applicant to tell the truth). If a student is caught lying on their application, that should be grounds for dismissal.

what m said about "if they lied, they should be expelled".

It's been a good long time since I applied to schools, but I think they require you to state if you've been convicted of a crime.

I also think there should be records kept of student's behavior, if for nothing else to put faculty fears to rest. Sometimes, you get a student with a "borderline" personality in your class and you don't know how things are goign to go: I had an incident a couple of years ago with someone who had very erratic and unpleasant behavior, and I feared this individual might become violent (he was also failing my class). I wound up e-mailing his advisor about my concerns, for the simple reason that I wanted a paper trail just in case things went bad. (I had a horrible mental picture of the usual aftermath-of-killing commentary by friends and neighbors: "He was so quiet, and just kept to himself; I can't believe he did this"). Fortunately, my concerns weren't belittled (nor was I, as would probably be the case at some schools, be written up for reporting a student). Also, fortunately, the student never did anything beyond come to my office and yell at me. But it was still a nervewracking experience.

Gina Grant pleaded no contest to bludgeoning her mother to death 5 years before applying to Harvard (class of 1999, I believe). When they learned of this, her acceptance was revoked. She was admitted to Tufts (who claim she was admitted before any of the Harvard story came out -- they also don't ask about a criminal record), where she was given a single.

I didn't find any infomation about how she has done since; if she's lucky, she's been out of the public eye.

Universities will never implement background checks because of the disparate effect it might have on black and latino applicants.