The Kamala Harris presidential campaign texted 70,000 Arizona State University students and at least 150,000 students statewide, urging them to vote for her, reports The College Fix.
Now, people are demanding to know how it obtained students’ private information.
The Harris campaign texted students from all Arizona public universities, including Arizona State, Northern Arizona University, and the University of Arizona.
“If Kamala Harris has access to all of Arizona college students’ phone numbers, what ELSE do they have?” asked the ASU College Republicans.
The text ASU students received reads:
Hi Sun Devils, it’s Kamala Harris. I wanted to remind you that the deadline to register to vote in Arizona is Monday, October 7. Thanks to record turnout among college students in 2020, I am Vice President of the United States Today.
Tim Walz and I are the underdogs in this election, but student voters could make the difference. We need your support to win. As an Arizona State University student, you can register and vote in Arizona. Your vote is your voice and your power. You must not let anybody take your power from you.
Students, other than recent transfer students, received the text message. Some parents and alumni received the texts as well, suggesting the actual number of recipients could be over 200,000.
“We’re going to be submitting a [Freedom of Information Act] request very soon to understand how that information was supposedly public,” said the head of the College Republicans. He added that ASU needs to do a better job protecting student data. The College Republicans are requesting all records related to the decision to provide student contact information for political use. They seek an explanation “on how it’s public information, and we haven’t heard anything from these universities clarifying that,” he said.
An ASU spokesperson says that “Under Arizona Public Records Law, ASU’s records are public unless there is a specific confidentiality requirement. While most student records are confidential under [the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act], FERPA exempts from confidentiality ‘directory information,’ which includes contact information,” he stated.
“ASU is therefore required to release student directory information upon request,” the spokesperson stated.
The College Republicans say that such information is not subject to disclosure, under an exemption to that exemption. It says that while the school has been “citing a part of FERPA that says it’s public data…they’re not citing the part where that public data is exempt when it’s political campaigns that have partisan charged messages.”
A philosophy professor at ASU also disputes the school’s explanation for the texts. The professor also asked why students only received a text from Harris and not from both campaigns. The texts “could be taken by students as an endorsement,” he said. “All year, ASU has been bringing in high profile Dems like Pelosi and Emhoff with no similar high level pro-Trump speakers,” which “gives the optics of bias even if that is not intended,” the professor said. The issue is both “a privacy matter and a bias matter,” which “are incredibly important problems and need to be addressed by ASU right away,” he argues.
College Republicans argue that the campaign’s use of student data for partisan messaging violates FERPA, breaches ASU’s confidentiality guarantees, and erodes trust. Their letter cites the school’s privacy policy, which states that student information can only be used for educational or safety purposes.
In response to the incident, Republican state Sen. Jake Hoffman said he plans a “full Senate investigation” into the “major security breach.” It is unlawful “for political campaigns to access personally identifiable information (PII) of public university students within AZ,” Hoffman says.
