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Greater Privacy For Student Emails Considered

Tennessee Watson

Right now digital materials stored on the servers of Wyoming’s institutions of higher education do not belong to the students who create them. But a bill making its way through the Wyoming Senate would change that. 

Currently, the content in a University email sent by a student belongs to the University because it’s stored on their server, and the University can do what it want with that email. Laramie Senator Chris Rothfuss said he decided to tackle the problem because of a case involving the National Collegiate Athletic Association.

“I have heard cases anecdotally where for example there was an NCAA investigation,” said Rothfuss. “The University is compelled to comply with NCAA violations to the extent they are allowed to within law, which means they are going to search some emails."

Rothfuss said the problem was that such searches can spill over into other student information, "even emails that are not the student athletes.”

House Bill 9 sets clearer expectations of privacy, and clarifies that ownership does not change based on where materials are stored. The bill will be debated two more times.

Tennessee -- despite what the name might make you think -- was born and raised in the Northeast. She most recently called Vermont home. For the last 15 years she's been making radio -- as a youth radio educator, documentary producer, and now reporter. Her work has aired on Reveal, The Heart, LatinoUSA, Across Women's Lives from PRI, and American RadioWorks. One of her ongoing creative projects is co-producing Wage/Working (a jukebox-based oral history project about workers and income inequality). When she's not reporting, Tennessee likes to go on exploratory running adventures with her mutt Murray.
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