Military Recruitment and the Solomon Amendment

The Solomon Amendment (10 U.S.C. § 983) is a federal law that allows military recruiters to access some address, biographical and academic program information on students age 17 and older.

The Department of Education has determined the Solomon Amendment supersedes most elements of FERPA. The District is therefore obligated to release data included in the list of “student recruiting information,” which may or may not match the Districts FERPA directory definition list. However, if the student has submitted a Request to Prevent or Allow Disclosure of Directory Information form through the Admissions, Records and Enrollment Development Office to restrict the release of his/her Directory Information, then no information from the student's education record will be released as specified in the Solomon Amendment.  

The following is a list of information that may be released to military recruiters pursuant to the Solomon Amendment:

Name, address, telephone, year of birth, level of education, academic major, degrees received, educational institution in which the student was most recently enrolled.

Under the Solomon amendment, information will be released for military recruitment purposes only. The military recruiters may request student recruitment information once each term or semester for each of the 12 eligible units within the five branches of the service:

a. Army, Army Reserve, Army National Guard

b. Navy, Navy Reserve

c. Marine Corps, Marine Corps Reserve

d. Air Force, Air Force Reserve, Air Force National Guard

e. Coast Guard, Coast Guard Reserve

The request must be submitted in writing on letterhead clearly identifying the unit of service requesting the student recruitment information.

The request should specify whether the information needed is for the current or previous semester.