By Ethan Rabinowitz
I am writing to the Northeastern community to expose the gross negligence exhibited by Northeastern in its choice of student ID numbers.
As most Northeastern students know, our social security number is used as our student ID number. Growing up, if there was one thing I was told never to give out to anyone, it was my social security number. Parents, teachers, even my driver’s ed teacher told us never to give out our social security number.
When I started NU, I was shocked to see my social security being used for my ID number. I’m even more shocked that it has taken me so long to do my part in bringing this issue to the public view. I decided to write this after seeing a piece on the 10 o’clock news, stating that Massachusetts residents have the option of not using their SSN as their driver’s license number.
Yes, we’re supposed to trust our school, teachers, teaching assistants and so forth, but with all the items listed as stolen in the police log, who’s to say someone won’t steal a piece of paper with my ID, or SSN on it? And even if that is not the case, you see news stories all the time of people you believe to be honest, going corrupt. I’m sure it would be very hard to trace this type of fraud back to the school, especially if the information is sold to a third party. This is why NU must stop using SSNs as student IDs.
There is no reason why NU can’t just assign numbers in some sort of sequential order. It’s not like telephone numbers that are limited to 10 digits. To change the range of phone numbers would take tons of system updates, phone updates, publishing updates and everyone would have to give out their upgraded phone number. With NU ID numbers, we would not run into this problem. There would be minimal system updates, but to insure the privacy and personal rights of their students, Northeastern should do whatever it takes.
Perhaps NU is not doing this anymore, perhaps if I wanted a new ID number, I could get one. But up until this point NU has not contacted me to let me know I can change my ID number. This means Northeastern has not done enough.
— Ethan Rabinowitz is a part-time mechanical engineering student.
