Metro State President Stephen Jordan announced today at an open meeting for the College community and the Denver media that a laptop computer belonging to Metro State was stolen from an employee’s residence on Saturday, Feb. 25, 2006.

The lap top may have contained unencrypted files with the names and social security numbers of any student who was registered for a Metro State course between the 1996 fall semester and the 2005 summer semester. This could include students from UCD or CCD who took pooled courses at Metro State; however the vast majority of names would be those of Metro State students. It is believed that more than 93,000 names would be contained in those files.

The theft was reported immediately by the employee to the Denver Police Department. College officials were notified on Monday, Feb. 27. Jordan explained that Denver Police did not authorize the College to make the public announcement until late on Wednesday, March 1, as they did not want their investigation, which is ongoing, to be comprised.

Jordan was quick to point out that there is no evidence of identify theft at this time. Plus he added, “The employee does not recall whether he had deleted those files from the laptop.”