Students’ pasts inspected by Public Safety

Many people have skeletons in their closets. It’s just that some secrets are more significant than others.

Every day Cindy Potts, administrative assistant of the GC&SU Public Safety Department, runs 50 or more background checks on students.

“We’ve got students in the cohort programs – whether it be nursing or teaching – we’ve got students that do a lot of volunteer work with Big Brother Big Sister and the GIVE Center, and they all require a background check,” Potts said.

Public Safety cannot run a background check on a student without a cause.

“When the students are going out into the school or the hospital with children is when the department requires a background check,” Potts said.

Georgia law also requires student teachers to have their backgrounds checked by their colleges.

Ruby Griffin, secretary of the Department of Foundations and Secondary Education, oversees part of the process.

“Before we can put a student into the public school system we have to follow (the state) rules,” she said. “One of their rules is that anyone that is in their classrooms has to have a criminal background check.”

And Griffin doesn’t mind doing it.

“We naturally do it, so when the school asks us, we can say, ‘Yes, here are the results,’” Griffin said.

Many students whose backgrounds are being checked say they don’t mind, and that it is an important part of the teaching criteria.

“Anytime you are working with children it’s important to have a background check, because it’s a safety net to know if a person is qualified to work with children,” said Karine Tupps, a junior early childhood education major.

Junior Melissa Long, another early childhood education major, also said the checks are necessary.

“It’s important because you don’t want somebody going into the schools that you don’t know anything about,” she said.

However only students who fall under the qualified specifications may be checked by the Public Safety Department, and the information is attained only after students sign a consent form.

“We have to have a signed consent form,” Potts said. “(The students) give their consent- it’s their signature. The only time we would run a background check without a consent form is if a student were arrested for some criminal offense.”

Posted by Colonnade Archives on Feb 17 2006. Filed under News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry