With the election less than three weeks away and the presidential race tight, political organizations have dragged a little-known aspect of federal law into the spotlight: access to college students’ phone numbers.
This month, some Republicans in Arizona, one of the most contested swing states, cried foul after students at the state’s three public universities received texts asking them to vote for Vice President Kamala Harris.
Arizona State University’s College Republicans chapter called the texts “election interference” and threatened legal action against the university. Republican State Senator Jake Hoffman also objected, saying the release of student phone numbers constituted an invasion of privacy and vowing to investigate.
Meanwhile, college students in Wisconsin, another swing state, allegedly received mass texts last week that advocates say could dissuade them from voting. The claim came in a Tuesday letter from a free-speech-advocacy group writing on behalf of Wisconsin’s chapter of the League of Women Voters, which supports expanding voting access but does not endorse specific candidates.
The letter called on U.S. Attorney General Merrick Garland and Wisconsin Attorney General Josh Kaul to investigate the texts — which arrived in the final days of Wisconsin’s voter-registration period — alleging that they amounted to voter intimidation, which is against state and federal law. The messages “reached many voters who are part of the University of Wisconsin system,” the letter said.
While students who attend residential colleges in Wisconsin are permitted by law to vote in the state using their campus address, the texts implied that doing so could place them in legal peril, threatening “fines up to $10,000 or 3.5 years in prison” for anyone who votes “in a state where you’re not eligible.” Most college students vote for Democrats, and Republican politicians have taken steps in recent years to make it harder for students to vote in the states where they’re enrolled.
“Students and young voters in general have an incredibly important voice,” said Courtney Hostetler, legal director for Free Speech for People. “It’s alarming to us that this specific group is being targeted in an anonymous fashion.”
The incidents serve as a reminder of a legal quirk that occasionally draws scrutiny: At public colleges, students’ phone numbers are a matter of public record.
Under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, public colleges can release student-directory information — including a student’s name, home address, phone number, birthday, and major — “to third parties without consent if [they have] given public notice,’” according to the U.S. Education Department. In some cases, requesters may be required to pay a fee to compensate employees for their time spent assembling the records.
Arizona State, one of the institutions to receive Harris campaign texts, displays a notice informing students that their contact information, as well as height and weight for athletes, may be released unless they opt out.
That disclosure hasn’t been enough to satisfy ASU’s College Republicans chapter. Carson Carpenter, the student organization’s president, called the texts an “attack.” In an open letter he co-signed on behalf of his organization, he said that students were “exploring their legal rights and positioning to hold the university accountable.”
Carpenter cited an Arizona law that forbids university employees or affiliates from using institutional time or resources “for the purpose of influencing the outcomes of elections or to advocate support for or opposition to pending or proposed legislation.” It does not forbid university employees from fulfilling Freedom of Information Act requests.
Neither Carpenter nor any students he spoke to were aware of ASU’s directory policies and their ability to opt out prior to receiving the texts, he said. He has chosen not to opt out since. “If I’m going to be a victim of this attack again,” he said, “I want to be the first one to know.”
In a statement, a spokesperson for ASU said that the accessibility of student directories “is not ASU policy but a matter of applicable law.” The spokesperson said that ASU had received no requests for student records directly from the Harris campaign, but that it’s common for political organizations, apartment complexes, and credit-card companies to seek out student data. “ASU does not control what these entities do with the information they obtain through the public-records request process,” the spokesperson said.
LeRoy Rooker, senior fellow at the American Association of Collegiate Registrars and Admissions Officers, or AACRAO, said that directory requests make up a large portion of any public-records officer’s workload. “Lots of requests come in for directory information,” said Rooker. “It’s a very big item.”
The Chronicle obtained logs of FOIA requests fulfilled by more than 20 large institutions since the beginning of July, and found 66 requests for student contact information.
Four institutions — Michigan State University, East Carolina University, Georgia State University, and the University of Nevada at Reno — had provided student contact information to Civitech, a progressive get-out-the-vote organization.
Quarterly data released Tuesday by the Federal Election Commission showed that Civitech had been paid by nine campaigns and political-advocacy groups in 2024, including three Democratic congressional campaigns. Six organizations — including Indivisible Action Arizona and the campaigns for Dan Helmer, a Virginia state delegate running for re-election, and Yassamin Ansari, who is running for the U.S. House in Arizona — paid a combined total of $34,922 for services related to “voter data,” “text messaging,” “text bank,” or variations thereof.
Civitech did not respond to a request for comment. On its website, the organization advertises the “power of political texting” through its TextOut tool. “Today’s consumers live in a fast-paced, digitally driven world,” Civitech writes. “The same can be said for political consumers — also known as voters. Campaigns need to meet voters where they are — on their phones.”
Outside of the political realm, recruiters for the U.S. Army, Air Force, and Marines were frequent requesters of student directories. So were Dormify, which sells bedding and furniture for dorm rooms, and the advertising platform Flytedesk, which facilitates paid advertising in student newspapers.
Local police departments also asked for students’ information. The police department in Roswell, Georgia, for example, requested Georgia State’s student directory in late August. Earlier that month, Georgia State had provided student records to an individual who listed his organization as “DEA” — an acronym for the Drug Enforcement Administration.
Students must opt out of disclosure in writing, and few do so. Records provided to The Chronicle by Michigan State showed that fewer than 5,000 of the institution’s 52,000 students had opted out. In Arizona, the number was even lower: Less than 1 percent of students at the state’s three public universities opted out, according to the Arizona Capitol Times.
“Many of them are not paying any attention to [the notice] when they get it,” said Rooker, of AACRAO. “And if they do, if they look at the things to be included? Most people aren’t going to have a problem with that.”
