In March of 2024 Bakersfield College students got a canvas notification telling us to vote for the student government association for the next school year.

I, like many others, decided to vote, under the assumption that they would not be available to the public.

However I and everyone who voted was incorrect about this, and not only were the votes public information but so were the school email and student ID number of every student who voted for professor of the year or SGA.

I stumbled on this in early August, to understand, I am active in theatre at BC and have had stories written about shows I was in. This is why on Aug. 7 I was searching my name to find these stories when under them something unfamiliar was there.

There was a link to the committees page of the BC website labeled under “Sheet1”. Under it I saw my full name, student email and ID number. Concerned, I clicked on the link and it downloaded a sheet with 645 students’ information. Personal information that we were not informed would be public.

If I had known that my student information was going to be public that anyone could find, I would not have voted.

Students have a federal right to keep personally identifiable information private, a right provided by the Family Educational Rights and Protection Act. FERPA is a set of rules that all postsecondary institutions are required to follow that prevents Colleges from sharing student information and academic records with the public.

The U.S department of education defines personally identifiable information as “Information that can be used to distinguish or trace an individual’s identity either directly or indirectly through linkages with other information.”

Student ID numbers are considered direct identifiers by FERPA and therefore are protected information that schools are not allowed to share.

To understand why this information was public I reached out to the director of campus engagement and leadership development, Leonardo Ayala.

Ayala said that the sheet was used to organize the votes from the students and that “It appears the file was uploaded in error by a former team member.”

As of now the information has been taken down. Ayala urged any student who may have been affected by this to email [email protected]