Following a small security breach resulting in release of Social Security Numbers in 2005 and a major computer security breach in 2006, the Faculty Senate passed a resolution in February 2007 calling upon the university administration “to halt the use of the Social Security Number as an identifier, to the extent feasible and with the highest priority.” The resolution also charged the university to “create a written policy specifying acceptable uses of the Social Security Number, specifying proper encryption to be implemented for any legitimate stored uses and specifying that any other use of the Social Security Number is unacceptable.”
The Faculty Senate also urged the university to assign new, unique numbers to faculty, staff, and students whose ID number was currently the Social Security Number. The senate asked the university, along with changing the number automatically, to inform all affected persons of the new number.
After November 2004 the university began issuing incoming students IDs that contained an assigned number instead of their Social Security Number. The Office of Information Technology announced in June 2007 that it would issue every student a new assigned number before the fall semester. The assigned numbers were sent to students via e-mail and students were issued a new VolCard with the assigned number at no charge if they surrendered the VolCard with the Social Security Number.