At Penn, we continue to learn more about our student population to identify factors that put undergraduates at risk for abusive drinking. In this effort, we cannot stress enough the importance of our partnership with you, the parents and families of Penn students. In fact, recent national data shows that parents are the most significant source of health information in the lives of their sons and daughters.

Students participating in the Spring 2000 National College Health Assessment survey ranked parents as their number one source of health information and third as a "believable source" of this information. (An interesting comparison: Friends ranked third as a source and twelfth for believability.)

As the number one source of health information for your son or daughter, you have a great opportunity to influence and educate your Penn student about alcohol and other substance abuse. We encourage you to learn as much as you can and to share what you know with your son or daughter. A helpful resource is the "Parent Connection" link on the website of the Higher Education Center for Alcohol and Other Drug Prevention of the U.S. Department of Education.

Parental Notification

It might surprise you to learn that, until recently, federal law prohibited colleges and universities from disclosing information about student records to anyone - even family members, unless certain narrow exceptions were met or written consent from the student was obtained.

In the past few years, this law has been amended to allow colleges to notify parents of alcohol and other drug violations by their children. Each school has the right to determine whether and in what manner they will notify parents about these violations.

At Penn, we created a policy consistent with our long-standing commitment to respect the autonomy, privacy, and responsible adult status of our students. The current Penn policy is to notify parents of alcohol and other drug violations by their sons or daughters after several significant incidents, or an incident that also includes a serious disciplinary component. For instance, an underage student holding a beer would not result in parental notification, but repeated incidents of high-risk alcohol or other drug use would.

Click here for more information about Penn's Parental Notification Policy.

We recognize that some parents would like to be notified after any alcohol or other drug incident, and other parents would prefer to be notified only for more serious situations. In our experience, we find that many students will voluntarily tell their parents of any alcohol or other drug violations they receive, and we urge them to do so. Penn will only communicate with you about very serious incidents, so we encourage you to use the "Talking To . . ." section of this website to establish open lines of communication on alcohol and other drug issues. By setting a precedent of openly discussing your values and expectations of your sons' or daughters' behaviors, they will be more likely to share with you any difficulties they may have.