Stanford U. Students Seek Admissions Files With Privacy-Law Requests

In a move that could make admissions officers across the country nervous, a group of anonymous Stanford University students who send out an irregular email called “The Fountain Hopper” are encouraging their classmates to request their complete admissions files by making formal requests that cite the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

A Stanford spokeswoman confirmed to The New York Times that the university had seen an increase in such requests. The law, known as Ferpa, gives students the right to view records that institutions keep about them.

BuzzFeed reported that students who had sought their files had received “evaluative essays written about them by admissions officers and numerical valuations assigned to their personal qualities, as well as descriptions of interviews and recommendation letters. The documents are labeled ‘confidential.’”

The Times account said one student had received “several hundred pages, including a log of every time his electronic identification card had been used to unlock a door,” along with admission records.

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• Source: Campaign-archive1