Could UCF’s Interpretation of FERPA Conceal Voting Record of Board of Trustees?
ORLANDO, Fla. — If you walked into the SGA election violation hearing regarding Student Body President-Elect Michael Kilbride Tuesday morning, no one would have stopped you at the door.
After all, the hearing was held in the Student Union of the University of Central Floida, a public building belonging to a public institution funded by state tax and tuition dollars. And, the hearing was regarding an important issue — whether his SGA presidential election victory, which guarantees him a seat on UCF’s Board of Trustees, would stand.
If you did happen to walk inside the room, sit down and watch the public hearing play out, you would have been easily able to identify Kilbride sitting before the Election Commission and successfully defend himself against the alleged violation. You even would have been able to video record it, or snap photos to publish online.
But if you had class that day and couldn’t make it in person, and instead asked UCF for a copy of the violation paperwork the next day, you no longer would be able to identify that it was Kilbride who was accused, or identify the student who did the accusing — because UCF’s team of attorneys claims it must first black out each student name before releasing documents to protect their educational privacy rights.
It might not matter to the average student now, but fast forward to this summer, when Kilbride is sworn in and sitting on UCF’s Board of Trustees. He may be asked to vote to cut majors, as current SGA President Brian Peterson was asked to last summer. KnightNews.com attended the meeting, and reported how Peterson refused to vote for those cuts.
But what if KnightNews.com isn’t able to make it to a meeting this summer? What if the Central Florida Future doesn’t show up either? What if your major is cut — by a margin of one vote?
How would you know if the student body president stood up for you?
You won’t find out by requesting the minutes, at least if UCF sticks to its apparent current interpretation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act — or FERPA.
According to a response letter KnightNews.com received Tuesday from UCF Associate General Counsel Youndy Cook, UCF is required to “redact personally identifiable information as neceassary to secure the privacy rights of students of the University” when releasing educational records.
UCF’s process of redaction, or removal, can be uniquely costly. Instead of redacting the records electronically, as the Orange County Sheriff’s Office does when releasing reports to KnightNews.com, UCF routinely forces the requesting party to pay the maximum fee state law allows for the cost of printing and additional labor.
Nearly one month ago, KnightNews.com filed a public records request for budget request packets submitted by Registered Student Organizations hoping to receive student activity and service fee funding. Even though the packets reportedly exist electronically, UCF said “we still insist they must be printed out and redacted” so the names of RSO leaders requesting the state money wouldn’t be released.
KnightNews.com questioned whether FERPA rules justified UCF in its stance — especially after discovering how UCF routinely publishes the names, e-mail addresses and phone numbers of RSO leaders on this Web site and this one too.
Office of Student Involvement Advisor Christa Coffey said that the RSO president’s name, phone and e-mail address are included on each budget request form and that there is no FERPA waiver required for student organization officers, “which is why the General Counsel’s office is required to redact some of the information on the RSO budget requests.”
Considering how restrictive Cook suggests FERPA is, KnightNews.com asked if UCF requires student leaders to sign a written waiver of FERPA rights or document authorizing the university to publish their names online for the whole world to see.
But there is “no such form,” Coffey confirmed, “that the contract person would sign in order to have the information … posted on the website.”
Even after KnightNews.com pointed this information out to UCF’s team of attorneys, also known as the Office of the General Counsel, the university still refused to provide the paperwork without first redacting the names.
KnightNews.com requested mediation of its dispute with the university through Florida Attorney General Bill McCollum’s office, but the university declined the request by not responding, according to an attorney in McCollum’s office.
When mediation fails, the next step in a records dispute such as this one could include filing a criminal complaint with Orange County’s prosecutor, according to the Attorney General’s office. Penalties could include jail time for certain record violations.
Another option would be suing the university to get access to the records. A student newspaper in Wisconsin recently took that action in a very similar dispute, and the University of Wisconsin-Milwaukee backed down, turned over the records and agreed to pay the paper’s attorneys more than $11,700 in fees.
If KnightNews.com sues UCF over the records — and possibly other issues students face such as freedom to assemble peacefully near the Student Union stage, freedom to gather news outside of the “Free Assembly Area” and freedom to assemble peacefully for tailgates on Memory Mall before football games — it would mark the second time in recent memory that a group of students would file a lawsuit against UCF, claiming a violation of its rights.
The first lawsuit involved the Beta Theta Pi fraternity, which UCF declared to have committed “sexual misconduct” violations — even though the accuser dropped her corresponding criminal rape case, and changed her story several times, according to reports.
In that case, UCF was adamant it was well within its rights to suspend Beta for sexual misconduct violations, and insisted it didn’t violate any due process procedures in the case, according to reports. It wasn’t until after reports came out that a judge was giving Beta’s claims weight, that UCF backed down and settled with the fraternity.
Legal experts had suggested if the court sided with Beta, UCF’s broad and sweeping ability to punish students and organizations for actions of others through its Office of Student Conduct could have been weakened. Which raises the question: Did UCF back down because it wasn’t worth the risk?
KnightNews.com has obtained a copy of the settlement through a public records request. The settlement was agreed to by Youndy Cook, the same UCF attorney who sent KnightNews.com a letter claiming it had to redact student names from the elections violation records relating to SGA.
KnightNews.com is conducting more research and gathering evidence of all possible violations committed by UCF, and expects to make a decision on whether to file a lawsuit against the university — or instead attempt to settle the dispute without litigation — sometime immediately following Spring Break.
Check back to Our Fight for Free Speech section for updates.
