By Kassel Pierre-Jean

As a result of a riot sparked after the 2004 Super Bowl, the Boston City Council presented legislation to create a database that could track university students living off-campus in conjunction with the local police.

Several Northeastern University students were blamed for the riot that resulted in the death of one person, caused significant property damage and strained relations between the university and residents of the town. In an effort to restore confidence between government officials and town residents, Boston City Council members have drafted an ordinance that would keep a careful watch on students-not just at Northeastern, but also at Boston’s 59 other colleges.

City councilors Michael Ross and Jerry McDermott have proposed the University Accountability Ordinance (Docket #1243), which would make the names, addresses, and phone numbers of all students living in the Boston area available to local and campus police. It would also ensure that university policies and procedures were applied to students living off-campus.

Boston University student Sean Carlson has been leading the charge against the ordinance.

Carlson said although the decision about Boston’s proposed ordinance is far from Hempstead’s city limits, the ordinance risks setting a model for how local governments handle future town government problems.

“The ordinance is not about students reporting their living situations to their college or university,” Carlson said. “It’s about schools turning their students’ information over to the city. The data… would be forwarded directly to the Boston Police Department and the Inspectional Services Department.”

Boston students are concerned with the privacy issues raised by the proposed regulation.

“When you have zero tolerance on-campus and zero tolerance off-campus, well, as a student in today’s world, that’s rather difficult to tolerate,” Carlson stated before the Boston City Council in September.

Carlson questions the implication of following college policies off-campus and also questions who would be affected by the ordinance.

“Will hard-working, full-time undergraduates be the only victims of this policy,” Carlson said, “or will it differentiate between the many overlapping student identities: full-time, part-time, summer, international, exchange, consortium and so on?”

Under the ordinance, a student is defined as “any person who is enrolled in more than half the minimum credits necessary for full-time status, as defined by the college or university at which the student is enrolled.” Thus, the city council legislation would affect not only full-time students, but also part-time students living off-campus as well.

Carlson defined the students affected by the legislation.

“It includes graduate students, medical and dental students and adults enrolled in executive education programs,” he said.

When Carlson appeared before the city council, he challenged how students would be characterized within their broad definition.

“Will accomplished high school students living at home, but enrolled in college courses and adults pursuing professional and executive programs be exempt? If so, why?” Carlson asked. “[How about] students who live in Boston, but go to school in Cambridge, Newton, Brookline? Students from those communities who go to school here in Boston?”

Senior Remya Rajagopalan, an off-campus student at the University, said she would not want a similar ordinance to be instituted in Nassau County.

“I wouldn’t like it personally. I think it’s an invasion of privacy,” she said.

Senior Sarojini Seupersad, who commutes from Suffolk, agreed.

“That’s an issue of privacy. I wouldn’t be comfortable with that,” she said.

A represntative from Boston Univ ersity was not immediately available for comment.

Melissa Connolly, assistant vice president for University Relations, said as far as she knew, there were no plans to institute such a system at the University.

“It’s impossible to say what we would or wouldn’t do,” Connolly said.

The Boston City Council approved a motion to refer the ordinance to the Committee on Government Operations on Sept. 1 and the committee will decide whether the ordinance should or should not pass. City Councilors Ross and McDermott have promised to redraft the ordinance to alleviate privacy concerns, Carlson said, but the current ordinance is still on the table.