How exactly do “permanent records” work? Do they actually exist, especially beyond school?
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They don’t really actually exist in school. Your transcript is pretty much the permanent part but our uni had a 5 year retention policy on academic, medical, and most disciplinary records, which we strictly adhered to. We had a permanent record policy on anything that involved law enforcement. And almost nothing outside of the transcript could be requested by other institutions other than by law enforcement (the student could always request). That was either by subpoena or as part of a background check for a security clearance. Parents couldn’t request anything without the students consent. Uni students are considered emancipated.
Even within schools those records are isolated from each other with medical stuff being covered by HIPAA, academic records by FERPA, disciplinary records are often also isolated off from medical/academic, etc. Years ago when I was trying to prevent a suspected school shooter, I was pretty badly stymied by that isolation. Different parts of the institution had different knowledge but wasn’t in a position to share. We worked out mechanisms to share that information better after that concern bore out (nobody hurt in the shooting, thankfully). The following year was VA Tech which was missed for almost identical reasons.
The problem with records keeping is that most stuff is kept too long and isn’t available to the people that need it, but all too often leak out to people who shouldn’t have it. So the stuff that is most ‘permanent’ generally can’t be used against you by institutions – but might be able to by hackers, etc. I mean, the mechanism we still primarily use to transfer medical records is the fax machine, FFS.
Generally in terms of records you need to worry about – law enforcement/court records, IRS records, and your credit rating in the US – which you can request changes be made to. Your credit rating isn’t really permanent, but people don’t take advantage of the opportunities to clean it up and it can become a problem over time. Medical records are useful to keep up to date, but that’s kind of on you. If you’re found unconscious on the side of the road, nobody knows where your records are kept or who to ask for them. Nobody gives a shit about your school records other than the next school in line (colleges will require your official HS transcripts – but there’s no disciplinary/attendance/etc. information on those). Even employers rarely check your degree, which people get busted on all the time. Absurd numbers of people in Congress don’t have the degrees they claim to have, etc.
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