According to this article in the Cape Cod Times, school officials at Dennis-Yarmouth Regional High School have been running criminal record checks on prom-invitees who are not students at D-Y, and denying admission to some students' dates. Per the Times:
Kenneth Jenks, D-Y principal, confirmed Monday that the school ran criminal records checks on any non-D-Y students invited to Saturday's prom and that at least six dates were denied a ticket because of some type of criminal history involving a drug or alcohol offense or violent crime.
It appears that the consent of the invitees was never obtained, a requirement under the law.
Under state law, schools may obtain CORI information about a person only if the subject has signed a specific CORI request form provided by the state, according to a 2003 advisory from the state education department.
A state Department of Education spokeswoman said yesterday that, to the agency's knowledge, the D-Y background checks were a violation of the state CORI law.
''Based on what the law says, they don't have a right to do that,'' Heidi Perlman said.
The records were obtained through the school "resource officers," police officers assigned to the school, who work on school grounds. Interestingly, the Dennis and Yarmouth Chiefs of Police seem not to have known about the checks.
Even juvenile adjudications, with successfully completed sentences, were grounds for exclusion from the prom.
