Ohio University students who no longer want deals on textbooks from California or greetings from Chinese shipping firms flooding their inboxes have two options: do nothing, or cease to exist — at least to the outside world.
Students’ university email addresses are available to anyone who requests them and the only way to hide them from non-university entities is to utilize the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
These emails, though annoying and occasionally harmful, are not reason enough to eliminate one’s place in OU’s public records, said Sean O’Malley, communication manager for OU’s Office of Information Technology.
“It’s like using a stick of dynamite to kill a mouse,” O’Malley said. “It’s essentially cloaking yourself in all facets.”
FERPA allows students to protect their personal information while they are receiving an education, according to the U.S. Department of Education, though some information remains public.
“Schools may disclose, without consent, ‘directory’ information such as a student’s name, address, telephone number, date and place of birth, honors and awards and dates of attendance,” according to the department’s website, though OU removed date and place of birth in 2008.
“Anyone who knows how to play the legal system can submit a public records request through OU’s Office of Legal Affairs and get a list of all student email addresses,” O’Malley said. That list excludes students who have requested their directory information to be protected by FERPA.
During the past five years, OU has received 177 public records requests for student directory information since 2008, with 39 of those requests coming in 2012, according to Pam Dailey, records management coordinator in OU’s Office of Legal Affairs.
Once released, those records can be distributed without university control, explaining why students receive seemingly random, non-OU emails sent to their university accounts.
In accordance with FERPA, OU has designated directory information similar to that outlined by the Department of Education, but if OU made the information private, it would make communication within the university much more difficult, University Registrar Debra Benton said.
“If OU made that change, students wouldn’t be able to find other students’ emails,” Benton said. “Once you restrict them and don’t define them as directory information, then they’re treated confidentially.”
In this case, “confidentially” means a student’s records become flagged and cannot be revealed to anyone inquiring about them from outside the university, Benton said.
Only about 50 OU students have “elected confidentiality,” she added.
To better protect themselves, students should take advantage of tools built into their email providers instead of making their address private, O’Malley said, adding that flagging spam usually keeps it from recurring.
“People think (the) university is selling email addresses, but OU isn’t,” he said.
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