Solomon Amendment Update
FEBRUARY 4, 2021
· ONS
Congress recently approved legislation that includes language updating the Solomon Amendment to increase military access to potential recruits. The Solomon Amendment is a federal law that requires institutions receiving certain federal agency funding to fulfill military recruitment requests for access to campus and for lists containing student recruiting information. It provides branches of the military access to student directory information which would have been denied them under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA).
The National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2021, effective January 1, 2021, amends the student recruitment information entitled to military recruiters under the Solomon Amendment, adding "electronic mail addresses (which shall be the electronic mail addresses provided by the institution, if available)." Moving forward, colleges and universities that provide students with institutional email addresses must now include those email addresses in lists to military recruiters.
A Senate amendment to the bill proposed a provision Senate amendment contained a provision that would also require colleges and universities to provide student directory information within 60 days of the start of a school year or 60 days of the date of a recruiter's request as well as to provide lists of those students who do not return to the institution from the previous semester. However, that provision was not included in the final version of the legislation. Military recruiters are still not entitled to information regarding students no longer enrolled at the institution.
Dena Wagner-Fossen
