How Campus Data Pipelines Got Frozen — and What It Means for Student Privacy Nationwide

When a public college shares student records with outside groups, the question is not whether civic engagement sounds good. The question is whether the school is following federal privacy law.

Five Stones Legal Defense Fund treated that question as a closed project on https://www.isuegov.com/case-4. The Fund's public victory statement says the work exposed and helped dismantle an illicit data pipeline that fueled partisan campus get-out-the-vote operations.

It also says Five Stones pressed accountability for misuse of student records under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA). That work, the statement says, helped set up decisive federal intervention by Secretary of Education Linda McMahon.

What stopped, according to that same public statement, was the data engine behind the ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge. The National Student Clearinghouse withdrew from the National Study of Learning, Voting, and Engagement (NSLVE).

Without that pipeline, the metrics used to coordinate turnout work across more than 1,000 campuses were frozen. Five Stones describes the result as a major win for federal compliance, student rights, and institutional integrity.

What the program looked like

The live project page explains the structure in plain terms. ALL IN engaged about 1,000 state universities and technical colleges. Participating schools set goals to raise student voter registration rates and student voting rates.

Partners such as Students Learn Students Vote worked with schools on student-only voter registration drives and student-only get-out-the-vote campaigns tied to the Civic Nation ALL IN Campus Democracy Challenge.

Schools shared student information with the National Student Clearinghouse and NSLVE. In return, NSLVE sent reports on student registration and voting rates. Schools used those reports to track progress toward ALL IN goals.

That feedback loop is why the data pipeline mattered. It was not a one-time file dump. It was a measurement system.

A March 2025 FERPA-focused complaint, available from the case page, asked the Department of Education to investigate participating public schools in Illinois, Wisconsin, Michigan, and Pennsylvania. Those included Illinois State University, Heartland Community College, University of Wisconsin–Parkside, Grand Valley State University, and Pennsylvania State University.

The complaint asked the Department to stop unauthorized sharing of FERPA-protected student data with third parties for plans to increase student registration and voting rates, and to take further action if schools would not comply.

Why the freeze matters beyond one program

FERPA exists so students and families can know when education records leave the schoolhouse. When schools send enrollment and related data into a turnout-measurement system, the privacy stakes are real even if the public branding says civic engagement.

The closed-win statement on the case page does not claim that every campus program is illegal, or that every student-facing registration drive violates federal law. It claims something narrower and more concrete: that an unvetted data engine powering ALL IN through NSC and NSLVE was forced offline after federal intervention, and that Five Stones' oversight and legal advocacy helped get there.

For institutions, the practical lesson is compliance. If a school cannot show a lawful basis to share student records for turnout metrics, it should not share them.

For students, the lesson is that privacy rules apply on campus the same way they apply in other education settings. For the public, the lesson is that administrative pipelines can run for years until someone forces the question into the open.

What this post is not

This is a closed-project retrospective. It is not an open fundraising pitch for ongoing ALL IN litigation. Five Stones Legal Defense Fund is a 501(c)(3) public charity (EIN 39-2456963). It is not a law firm and does not create an attorney-client relationship by publishing this post. Groups with a shared legal project can work through the Fund.

If you want the primary public record for this closed win, read the victory statement and case summary at https://www.isuegov.com/case-4. To support Five Stones' work, gifts may be designated to a specific project fund or to Five Stones as a whole. A gift is still a gift to the Fund, not a stake in a case. Give at https://isuegov.com/donate or start at https://isuegov.com.