GREENWICH VILLAGE — The Common App is exploring whether the 600 schools that use its service would be open to removing questions that ask prospective students about their criminal histories, DNAinfo New York has learned.
The news came after a conference call last week among Common App leadership, administrators from New York University and advocates from the organization Incarceration to Education Coalition (IEC), who are pushing for the check boxes to be removed from the application.
The Common App directors would not commit to removing the boxes. But a spokeswoman later told DNAinfo that the nonprofit has been considering the issue since the summer, engaging in talks with the more than 600 colleges and universities that use their application.
In a recording of the call posted online, the activists — all NYU students or alumni — could be heard making their case to members of the Common App's Board of Directors, made up of admissions deans from schools around the country.
They argued that "the box" has "a chilling effect" — its presence deters people from completing the application, thereby keeping formerly incarcerated people from obtaining an education. They pointed to a study that found that 62.5 percent of potential applicants who have checked the box do not complete it.
One activist became choked up talking about how access to education, and to NYU, changed her life.
► READ MORE: Formerly Incarcerated NYU Administrator Wants School to 'Ban the Box'
Another, Eric Sturm, a 2015 alum of the Gallatin School and an IEC organizer said, "The greatest education experience I've had in my life has been learning from formerly incarcerated people at NYU, both professors and students and alums."
"The Box," as it's known, was added to the application in 2006, though the Common App directors on the call did not have specific information as to why it happened that year.
► READ MORE: NYU Questions Use of Criminal Background Check on College Application Form
One director on the Common App board, University of Richmond admissions dean Gil Villanueva, referenced the Virginia Tech mass shooting of 2007.
"We had to deal as a nation and a world with a travesty," he said.
But the activists pointed out that the Virginia Tech shooter had no criminal history. (He did have a history of mental illness, and had been subject to previous disciplinary action at the school for stalking two female students.)
The shooting also occurred after the box had been added.
The directors noted that schools can opt not to see the results of the box. NYU admissions officers, for example, do not see the checkboxes in their first round of application readings. The results only become visible to a specially trained panel after a tentative decision is made to admit the applicant.
But given the chilling effect, the activists asked whether the Common App would consider moving the checkboxes to the individual schools' supplemental applications, allowing individual schools to decide whether to include the question.
Villanueva said that was an option they would "consider as a board first and then connect with our membership" to discuss.
► READ MORE: Employers Can't Ask About Criminal Background on Job Applications Anymore
The NYU administrators on the call were largely there to facilitate the conversation. The school recently sent a letter to the Common App requesting that it conduct a study to assess whether the box serves a purpose and if it unfairly affects minorities and low-income students.
► READ MORE: NYU Questions Use of Criminal Background Check on College Application Form
The Common App spokeswoman told DNAinfo that the nonprofit has been engaged in conversations about potentially removing both boxes since the summer, but that the decision would have to be made with the involvement of the member schools.
"We started the conversation with members months and months and months ago," she said. "Getting the letter from NYU was good and welcome because the conversation had already started and they were joining in."
NYU spokesman John Beckman said the call between IEC and Common App was arranged by the school, and expressed support for the student activists. He reiterated the school's urging that the Common App pursue research on whether "the Box" disproportionately harms poor and minority students, or has any value at all.
"NYU takes the IEC's views seriously, we believe they are posing valid questions, and senior NYU administrators have met with them repeatedly," Beckman said. "NYU has requested that the Common App organization undertake a study of the 'box's' validity, value, and impact... We are hopeful the Common App will move forward with research."
