By: Diane Benjamin
Remember when ISU wouldn’t give me emails that mentioned Charlie Kirk? https://blnnews.com/2025/11/15/isu-foia-fail/
ISU claimed there were too many emails, even when I narrowed the request to ONE DAY.
I wasn’t the only person trying to find out what staff were telling students about Kirk. Another FOIA was filed by Chad Berck on behalf of the McLean County Republicans.
His FOIA was also denied. The ISU denial email included this line:
The University cannot run an email search that does not include student emails. Since the University does not have a method of searching only faculty and staff emails, the sender of each and every email would have to be manually checked to determine if the email was protected under FERPA.
Do students know that the Administration has the ability to monitor (or “spy on”) their emails? Does ISU tell students that their emails are not private communication?
If students want truly private communication, they should not use an @illinoisstate.edu email address.
By combining official business with student emails it is easy for ISU to deny FOIA requests by citing privacy of student emails and massively increasing the volume of emails they have to search.
University emails are institutional property, with little to no expectation of privacy. Administrators can access, monitor, or archive emails for compliance, investigations, security, or legal reasons (e.g., FERPA, public records requests). This applies to all users but feels more intrusive for students mixing personal and academic use.
If students don’t know, they need to understand nothing on an ISU email is private.
It appears ISU wasn’t worried about FERPA violations in this story: https://blnnews.com/2025/08/25/gop-press-release-isu/
In case you are wondering about the ISU table flipper, Derek Lopez is still in federal custody with a trial date of March 6th. He was charged last October with making threats against the President.
Oh yes the “role based” platforms enabling stalkers and
spying is well alive in BN and area.
ISU and politics cal class just ignores their data abuses in the name of innovation and safety abusive process and “trusted” data harvesting and so-called governance.
Welcome to the China model/military Industrial public private platforms and processes. Communications and HR and software engineering and management has gone down bad paths enabling a lot of bad things (some our taxes pay for)-so we pay for our own exploit.
Easy sales pitches enabled a lot of this. Similar to ADO and WorkDay and Salesforce (all same players).
County has issues for sure.
Why exactly do you think you should have access to ISU students e-mails? To do what? To harass and stalk students over what they wrote about Charlie Kirk?
Boy you really must have nothing to do with your life as a busybody.
Students have a 4th Amendment right against unreasonable and warrantless searches. They also have the 1st Amendment rights to write and express themselves. Thank God ISU doesn’t “spy’ on its students. You have no right to their emails so you can dox and intimidate students over their e-mail.
Neither of us wanted them. ISU claimed 10’s of thousands emails mentioned Charlie Kirk and they couldn’t filter out students.
Reading too difficult? I except your apology
Just what do you think faculty were saying to students? Do you have an evidence that anything was being said?
Maybe put out a post on here and see if any students will give you any evidence?
No FOIA no evidence. Obviously ISU doesn’t want anyone to know.
So, you’re completely speculating that they did send emails to students?
Someone at ISU said I should FOIA. They didn’t say why.
I highly doubt anything was sent out over email. I’m pretty in tune with what goes on at ISU, and would have heard something. However, would a professor or two have said something in class, highly probable.
But, I don’t think any of this matters. What do you want to gain from it? We all know there are liberal professors out there who didn’t like him. In the end, if they did say anything, it didn’t change how many students showed up. And like I said on a previous post, it did have an impact and created good discussion in classes after the fact.
ISU also isn’t deliberately hiding anything. They literally don’t know. We don’t have IT staff who sit around and monitor email. You might want to ask the person at ISU who told you to FOIA it for a reason why…and an example.
This is no different than an employer being able to read your emails. There really isn’t a scandal here, or new information, or anything to wring hands over.
The story was to let students know. It’s also a convenient way to deny FOIA requests