Overview

FERPA — the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act of 1974, as amended — is a federal law that governs the privacy of student education records, access to those records, and disclosure of information from them.

Under FERPA, you have the right to restrict the release of certain categories of your personal information. Visit the Office of the Registrar's FERPA Overview webpage for a comprehensive list of what information can and cannot be released.

Before updating your privacy restrictions, be sure to understand what you are restricting and review some examples of ways FERPA holds can affect you:

• Restrictions will deny your appearance on the Dean's List, graduation lists, and other similar announcement and publications.
• Restrictions will remain in place until you choose to remove them, even after graduation.

Follow the steps below to edit your FERPA restrictions.

Step by Step

1. Login to MyUW.
2. Click on the Student Center tile, then the Profile tile.
   
   
   
   
3. From the menu on the left, select Privacy Restrictions.
   
   
   
   
4. Select your preferred restriction(s) and click > for a more detailed view.
   
   Note: You also have the option to "restrict all" or "clear all". Before you select the "restrict all" option, be sure you:
   • Understand what you are restricting and how it will affect your personal information; and
   • Review whether you would like to enter any exceptions. See below for more information on the available exceptions.
   
   
   
   
5. Add or clear restrictions by selecting the relevant check boxes and clicking Save.
   
   
   
   
6. Click Save on the main page to submit your changes.

Exception Overview

When selecting an exception, you may be allowing information to be released in certain scenarios:

• Publications exception: This exception allows your directory information to be in published lists of graduates, Dean's lists sent to hometown newspapers, and similar announcements and publications. However, the Dean's List on the Office of the Registrar's website will not include your information if you have a restriction of any kind.
• Directories exception: At this time, this is only a placeholder for future development on name/email exceptions to allow this information to be restricted but accessible in the campus directory. This exception currently has no impact on privacy restrictions.
• IT applications: At this time, this is only a placeholder for future development on applications such as Box, LinkedIn Learning, etc. This exception currently has no impact on privacy restrictions.