FERPA and Second Life
February 15th, 2008 Posted in UncategorizedFERPA
1974, aka the “Buckley Ammendment”
Limits what you can do with “education records” that you “maintain”
FUD says don’t tell anyone anything, but there’s been a huge change as a result of the VaTech shootings. There will be Educause Live! events on FERPA on Oct 17 and Nov 5.
What’s an “education record”? Anything that can identify a student. A piece of email, e.g.
What’s “Maintain”? Maintained by the institution. There are lots of nuances.
FERPA is administered by a unit within the Dept. of Education called FPCO, run by Leroy Rooker. THeir interpretation is a lot of the actual law, embodied in letters written to campuses. The penalty for FERPA violation is complete loss of student funding, but that’s never been applied. In practice, Leroy sends letters telling people to stop what they’re doing. Gonzaga v. Doe (2002) holds that there is no private right of action for FERPA violation - only the FPCO can bring FERPA actions.
State privacy laws can be more restrictive than FERPA.
FERPA and Outsourcing -
Do you want student mail to be a maintained education record, protected by FERPA? If the mail’s not in the control of the university, then it’s not maintained, so it’s not FERPA protected.
Mail as a vehicle for FERPA-protected data.
What FPCO really says - “protect education records in ways that are reasonable and appropriate to the circumstances in which the information or records are maintained.”
