A fairly recent report explains how universities across the country have given access to third-party vendors who review their personal data to examine college student voting trends.
The nine-page report describes how a federal election study conducted by Tufts ‘ Institute for Democracy in Higher Education persuades school officials from across the nation to give the National Student Clearinghouse, where it is kept, voting information.
In a recent interview with The College Fix, Heather Honey, an inspector with Verity Vote, said,” This is an amazing infraction of student protection and is not consistent with FERPA.
Verity Ballot, she said, is a nonprofit that works to promote election integrity and ensures clarity in government. Its findings were released in July 2023.
At issue is Tufts ‘ institution’s National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement, launched during the Obama administration in response to a” call to action”, the report states.
However, the U.S. Department of Education advised colleges and universities to participate in the study as late as February, saying that” all schools can use the federal dataset to identify target populations.”
According to its website, the research is” a company to colleges and universities interested in learning their pupils ‘ cumulative voter registration and participation rates in federal elections since 2012″.
The FAQ section states that” NSLVE files are the result of combining public voting records with student enrollment data.” More than 1, 200 schools participate in the study.
According to the 2022- 2033 reauthorization form, a university’s leaders must sign a two-page agreement that states officials are allowing the National Student Clearinghouse to discharge their kids ‘ FERPA information to a” third party vendor,” a firm not named in the agreement.
” The third party supplier of choice from inception until lately has been Catalist, the Democrat’s special voting information service. Tufts maintains a marriage with Catalist, but it also has an agreement with L2 Political to analyze NSC data, according to the report.
The report claims that campus leaders “may have been duped into allowing the disclosure of highly sensitive personal student data to a political secret corporation that works specifically with Democrats and progressives” under the guise of a dubious” research exception” to FERPA’s prohibitions on sharing the data.
Peter Collins, a spokesman for Tufts University, informed The College Fix via email on Tuesday that the school switched to L2 in 2018.
The report also argues the release of the data does not fall under FERPA’s exceptions, which must fall under one of three categories: to “develop, validate, or administer predictive tests”, “administer student aid programs”, or “improve instruction”.
According to the two-page contract that the universities sign, the data is required to enhance instruction:
NSLVE provides colleges and universities with the opportunity to track down and track students ‘ voting and registration rates, use this data to evaluate the effectiveness of its educational programs, and increase student civic engagement and engagement in democracy. For publishing aggregate reports on student civic engagement and civic learning that do not identify the Institution, IDHE shall also use the Institution’s de-identified enrollment data.
However, the Verity Vote report contends that” [m]easuring the success of voter registration or Get Out The Vote ] activities does not logically fit into any of the study categories… of FERPA.”
” Voter registration is not a requirement for student aid, it does not improve academic instruction, and it does not assist with predictive tests,” the statement goes.
When asked about the Verity Vote argument, Collins responded that the study does improve academic instruction and qualifies as an exception.
” NSLVE data and reports are used as a way of measuring something that is a key part of higher education’s role in the U. S. – educating for democracy”, he said. NSLVE is one of the only ways to use it as a proxy for student political learning.
He cited campus campaigns that “educate for democracy year-round, not just during an election season, and using elections as that “teachable moment” for students as responsible citizens in a democracy.”
We conduct additional research on the learning conditions for civic learning. We help campuses understand and use their NSLVE reports, but we always stress the educational value of this information”, Collins said.
Verity Vote claims there is” no mechanism to verify deletion of the NSC data from the vendor’s database,” despite the contract’s promise that the data will be deleted within a year.
The voter data company, which has long been the self-described “progressive” Catalist before L2, essentially gains access to what is known in voting jargon as EBUs, or eligible but unregistered voters, according to the report. In the case of college students, studies show that’s primarily Democratic voters.
The voter data companies extract the student’s personal information and convert it into de-identified aggregated student voting data, which is then used in the Tufts study and distributed to universities ostensibly to aid in improving education.
Tufts claims that the student files have been de-identified by removing names, identification numbers, and the month and day of birth. The collection of attributes stored in the data can be used to identify individuals just as the cookies on your browser can be used to identify you, according to the report. This is superficial de-identification, however.
It refers to a report from the Office of the Director of National Intelligence, which was declassified in June 2023, and describes how “de-identified data can easily be re-identified with minimal attributes.”
Collins claimed that L2 deletes student personal identification data because the university and the institute do not receive it.
Tufts ‘ relationship with the voter data providers is” simply to access a voter file, which is already a matter of public record,” he said.
” We do not ask for or receive any information, for example, such as phone records. Nothing in a public voter register is partisan. We do not receive any data on party affiliation”.
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