Grade Mailing Story Misled Readers
Grade Mailing Story Mislead Readers
The article "Registrar Accidentally Sent Grades to Parents" [June 25] was misleading in two respects.
First, the Registrar's Office did not send student grade reports to parents. The reports were addressed in the students' names. It has been MIT policy for many years to send grades only to students, not their parents.
The Registrar's Office maintains two basic addresses for students: a term address and a home address. Normally, spring grades are sent to graduate students at the term address and to undergraduate students at the home address. A student may, however, provide an alternate temporary address for the mailing of the grade report. This temporary address has an expiration date and time associated with it. The time was earlier than we assumed and so the mailing defaulted to the home addresses for 187 students.
Second, MIT Student Information System database programmers were not involved in the problems sending the reports. The Registrar's Office works with the MITSIS programs, but the responsibility for the data and use of these programs resides with the Registrar's Office.
It is important that students be reaffirmed in their understanding that grades were not and are not by policy sent to parents.
Elizabeth Bradley, Associate Registrar
Mary Callahan, Associate Registrar
Constance Scribner, Associate Registrar
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