Students, faculty and staff will receive new identification cards this spring to help protect them from identity theft.
Tom Bilger, registrar and director of registration and academic progress, said Ball State decided to stop using social security numbers as an identification number about two years ago.
"We've been concerned about identity theft for quite a while," he said. "It's hard to tell how often it has happened on campus, but there's always a possibility."
Beginning in late April, every Ball State student, employee and staff member will be randomly assigned a nine digit number encoded on a new identification card, Bilger said.
The Registrar's office will issue about 25,000 new cards beginning April 26 through 30, Assistant Director of Registration and Academic Progress Nancy Cronk said.
The information encoded on old identification cards will become invalid on May 13, Cronk said.
To make the process easier, Cronk said the Registrar's office will announce identification card distribution points around campus in April.
If students do not pick up their card at one of the locations, they can go to the Registrar's office the following week.
With the new card, students will receive their new identification number, Cronk said.
Bilger said the university's computing services is creating a Web site where students can access their new identification number. When completed, the Web site will link from the Registrar's homepage, he said.
The new cards will have the same photo as the old cards, Cronk said. However, the Registrar's office has asked faculty and staff who have not had a recent identification photo take within the past three years to have their photos retaken.
The new identification number doesn't mean students can forget their social security number, Cronk said.
Social security numbers will be required for governmental forms such as financial aid, employee tax forms and other required federal and state regulatory reporting, Cronk said.
"We hope the change will make the students more aware of how important their social security number is ... and why it's important to keep it private," Cronk said.
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