A Student Government Association representative is taking initiative to try to make leadership at the University of Central Florida more transparent.
UCF Senator Jacob Milich is asking the state legislature to make clear that SGA records are not protected by FERPA.
FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, is federal legislation that protects student education records.
Milich’s proposal is in response to the Knight News lawsuit against UCF, where the court affirmed rulings finding names of SGA officers spending a nearly $20 million budget, or who are accused of improper spending, can be protected by FERPA.
In other words, names of SGA officials who spend student tuition dollars are considered “educational records” and can be hidden.
According to the FERPA website, education records are “records that contain information directly related to a student and which are maintained by an educational agency or institution or by a party acting for the agency or institution.”
“[A] recent court opinion in Knight News vs. UCF injects confusion and uncertainty into whether SGA can operate in the transparent, open manner it desires, particularly as it relates to disclosing budget request documents and allegations of malfeasance to the public,” the resolution states.
“BE IT RESOLVED, That it is the opinion of the Forty-Eighth Student Senate of the University of Central Florida that the Florida Legislature should clarify in state statutes that records maintained by a Student Government are not ‘education records’ protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA),” the resolution said.
Milich will be presenting the resolution to the UCF Governmental Affairs Committee Thursday at 4:30 p.m.
“I am committed to fighting for a transparent student government,” Milich said.
Knight News is going to ask the court of appeal to reconsider its opinion or else endorse having the case reviewed by Florida’s Supreme Court.
