The Defy campaign appealed the IU Student Government Election Commission’s dismissal of Defy's complaints against the Inspire campaign Monday, according to the Election Commission’s chair.
The campaign had 48 hours from the time of the Election Commission’s dismissal Saturday to file an appeal, making it by 9 p.m. Monday. Defy filed the appeal at 8:49 p.m. said senior and IUSG Election Commission Chair Quinn Gordon in a text message to the Indiana Daily Student.
The Defy campaign filed two complaints against the Inspire campaign following the IUSG election regarding its use of mass emails to IU students and non-students. High school seniors, graduate and transfer students who are not enrolled at IU but still have a university-affiliated email address received an email from Inspire, according to Defy’s complaint documents.
The Defy campaign felt the collection of students’ emails violated university IT policy.
The Election Commission submitted the concerns and response of the Inspire campaign to the University Information Policy Office, Gordon said in an interview with the Indiana Daily Student Sunday. The office did an internal investigation and concluded there was no violation of university policy.
“To our knowledge, they did not do anything wrong in an official sense," Gordon said.
According to the appeal, Defy felt Inspire violated the IT-21 policy, which states IU community members can’t send emails to the university-affiliated email addresses of people they don’t have “an established mutually-accepted personal, business, or academic relationship” with.
Defy also said it felt Inspire violated Direct IQ’s Terms of Use, which Defy claims the campaign used to acquire the emails. Defy said Inspire also violated policy DM-01, which forbids sending data to a third party without their authorization and does not relate to their role of job at IU, according to the appeal.
The campaign also said Inspire violated policy DM-02 by transmitting a bulk list of student and non-students’ emails without getting approval by the Office of the Vice President and General Counsel.
According to the appeal, Defy felt there may be a violation of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. The act authorizes the university to disclose information to third parties’ without their consent only under specific circumstances.
FERPA allows for information disclosure as long as it is “directory information” and the student or legal guardian has not opted out of this disclosure.
Gordon said the appeal means the motion will now go to the IUSG Supreme Court to decide whether to accept or reject the appeal. If the court accepts the appeal, the certification of the Inspire campaign’s victory could be postponed to the end of the week or even next week.
