Pictured Above: Under a bill sailing through the Legislature, students’ intensely personal comments could be recorded without their permission. This photo of adjunct instructor Tim Curran and his students in class was taken before the COVID-19 pandemic began.
Courtesy of USF
By Nancy McCann
In the classrooms of Florida’s public colleges and universities, some students share intensely personal information about themselves.
They might talk about sexuality, race, politics, suicide, sexual misconduct or mental health challenges.
Under a bill moving quickly through the Florida Legislature, those private moments could be recorded — without a student’s permission or knowledge — by anybody else in class.
Karen Morian, president of the union that represents faculty around the state, told a Senate committee last week that making classrooms “the one space in Florida where you no longer have to get someone’s consent to film them indoors” invites “a whole can of worms.”
“You’re asking every student in Florida, a million students who walk into a classroom, to give up the right not to be recorded without their consent, and we know how audio and video … (can) be manipulated,” Morian told members of the Senate Appropriations Committee.
“Our classrooms are not public spaces in the way you think of a public park,” she said. “We do not have random people walking through our classrooms . . . or even in the green space on campus.”
But the sponsor of the bill (SB 264), Sen. Ray Rodrigues, R-Estero, says there is now “variation” at public universities and colleges for allowing recording in the classroom, and it needs to be standardized.
He said that classroom conversations are already being recorded with no reports of problems.
“We’re going . . . to make it clear that there is no expectation of privacy within the classroom, and that it may be recorded,” Rodrigues said.
The bill, which was approved by the committee – with amendments – on a 12-8 vote, heads next to the full Senate. A companion bill (HB 233) was approved by the House on the same day on a 77-42 vote.
Rodrigues’ bill has other controversial provisions.
It would require an annual survey at the state’s public universities and colleges to assess “intellectual freedom and viewpoint diversity” and says those institutions cannot shield students from free speech protected by the First Amendment.
Morian urged the senators to reconsider those requirements.
She said the cost of the intellectual surveys should be taken into account because they “will not be minimal” and the data “is going to be flawed.”
“We’ve not seen an uptick in complaints of intellectual squashing of free speech,” Morian said. “In fact, we’ve worked very hard to keep our classrooms open where students can explore ideas through an open and safe debate.”
She suggested that a better way to collect information on intellectual freedom is looking at grievances and complaints on each campus.
“On the shielding provision — there are great concerns all across our colleges and universities about opening up those campuses to a lot of people who could cause a lot of trouble like we saw in Charlottesville (Virginia), when people marched with torches” she said.
“There’s a lot of concern, especially among minority populations . . . to take away the independence of those presidents and provosts to decide who gets to use that property and for what purposes.”
The Florida Education Association and the League of Women Voters of Florida also oppose the bill.
Sen. Darryl Rouson, D-St. Petersburg, voted against the bill in the Senate committee.
Sen. Jeff Brandes, R-St. Petersburg, told The Crow’s Nest on Friday that he voted “yes” during the committee meeting “but will vote ‘no’ on the floor if it is not modified.”
Brandes illustrated his concerns during the meeting.
“If I’m a student and I issue a response to a colloquy that’s going on in my classroom and that’s recorded, and . . . maybe I said something that I would not like shared,” Brandes said.
He asked if the student who recorded the colloquy would have to get his permission to share it.
Rodrigues responded that “it would be the lecturer (professor) that has the authority” for the recording to be shared.
“So my conversation could be recorded and disseminated, potentially, if the lecturer agreed . . . and now all of a sudden that could become public information, right?” Brandes continued. “But it was done in a private classroom and maybe . . . the recording took place without my knowledge.”
“That is a possibility,” Rodrigues said.
Brandes suggested that it would be better to “hand it over to the state Board of Governors” to develop a policy for recording in the classroom. That way, “we stay within current law so you can’t disseminate it,” Brandes said.
USF St. Petersburg Regional Chancellor Martin Tadlock told The Crow’s Nest that he thinks the provision on classroom recording is unnecessary.
“Reasonable accommodation is a legal requirement of faculty and is already practiced daily,” he said. “That means faculty members work with students who need to record classroom lectures for a variety of needs.”
