Developing Stand-Alone University Policy on Recording In Classrooms

At the January 27, 2025 Faculty Senate meeting, President Slouber provided background about recordings by students being uploaded to LLMs for summaries and stressed that this is a different issue than disability accommodation. The main question is deciding whether to move forward with the idea of restricting classroom recording without consent. Senators discussed FERPA and student consent, whether a policy would also apply to video/photography, enforcement mechanisms, and how recording might be taken out of context or used for targeting and harassment. The UFWW is looking into this with respect to intellectual property, with the Assistant Attorney General doing a case law review. However, the outcome of the legal questions about intellectual property would not impact a policy change. 

On February 10, the Senate unanimously passed a motion to add the following language to POL-U2100.02 Ensuring Academic Honesty, Section 3:    

d. Record content in classrooms or virtual instruction spaces, and/or disseminate classroom content, without the express permission of the instructor and students enrolled in the course section, unless approved as a disability accommodation. Unauthorized dissemination of unauthorized records may violate classmates' right to privacy (FERPA) and intellectual property laws. 

Upon adoption by the Faculty Senate, the language was forwarded to University Administration for review. It was determined that the proposal is not a minor policy change and that the Academic Honesty policy is not the right place for it. As a result, the Senate will develop and propose a new stand-alone policy that would be a general university policy resulting in a student conduct code violation. The draft policy will open for a 30-day campus-wide review period.

On April 7, 2025, the Senate adopted by consent a modification to the February 10, 2025 Senate Motion on Recording Content in Instructional Spaces to instead authorize the development of stand-alone policy.