Has my privacy been violated?

[fizzer]

What is the name of your state (only U.S. law)? California

I am 26 years old. I am attending a university and I was formerly working for a professor on campus, who I was not involved with in an educational way whatsoever. After I was fired, the professor found my father's private business line on her own, which was never provided by me to the employer or even the university, and called him to inform him of my termination and that a police report would be filed on me if I did not return the keys to her office. She also felt it her duty to tell him I had not registered yet for classes for the next semester. Obviously angry, my father wrote her back asking for more information. As for me, I have called her and e-mailed her, and she has not replied at all. I immediately returned the keys and assumed our relationship was over. Tonight, four days later, she wrote my father back (still without replying to my messages) to let him know she has more to tell him about me once winter break ends, and told him that he needs to contact my academic advisor.

Our relationship didn't end well, but I didn't do anything horrible, certainly nothing remotely criminal. I feel she has crossed the line, is making this personal, and is acting solely to damage me. I also feel she is unfairly using her position as a professor on campus to find out academic information about me and use it as a weapon by feeding it to my father. All of this without returning my calls or replying to any of my messages. I have never given her permission in any way to discuss my employment situation or my academic situation with anyone but myself. I am not a minor nor a dependent.

Is any of this OK? Was it right for her to contact my father at all regarding the termination of my employment? Is it legal? As solely my employer, is it right for her to be able to use her position as a professor to discover academic information about me, and then in turn inform my father of such information? Is my privacy being breached, and am I being harassed? She has caused me great emotional distress over the last week, none of which would have occurred if she hadn't contact my father. She didn't give me any call or warning that she was going to do so. What should I do?

 

[eerelations]

Unfortunately, while highly unprofessional and quite possibly unethical, nothing that your former boss has done is illegal. There are simply no laws prohibiting former employers from contacting anyone - including parents - and providing termination details.

Rgarding your former boss looking into your academic records, she may have violated some internal institutional policies, but she didn't break any laws.

You may be feeling harassed as a result of all this, however, please keep in mind that harassment is only illegal if it's based specifically and directly on the harasssed individual's race, gender, religion, age, or disability, and so on.

 

[quincy]

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) is a federal law that protects the privacy of all students' educational records that are from schools receiving federal funds. The rights to these academic records transfer from parent to child when the child reaches age 18.

Access to these records, or release, transfer or other communication of personally identifiable information from these records, to any party, by any means, is prohibited without written consent from the person whose records are being accessed or disclosed (with some notable exceptions). Personally identifiable information does NOT include a student's name, address, field of study, dates of attendance, or enrollment status, for instance.

Whether the university professor violated FERPA would depend on whether the university is private or public, and on whether this professor accessed information directly from your educational records and had the right to access these educational records, and then it would depend on what information was accessed and disclosed to your father without your written consent.

For further information on FERPA, you can go to http://www.ed.gov/policy/gen/guid/fpco/ferpa/index.html.

I am not sure I entirely agree with eerelations' assessment of the professor/employer's rights to inform your father of your employment status, but I defer to the wisdom of the employment experts here. If what was communicated by the professor to your father was false, however, and was reputationally injurious, then the professor may have defamed you by contacting your father and providing false information.

A review of all of the facts would be necessary to know for sure whether any of California's privacy laws, or a federal law, was violated by the professor's actions. You may want to run your situation by an attorney in California.

 

[eerelations]

I certainly defer to quincy on the educational laws and the defamation issue. However, if what the OP's boss told the OP's father about the OP's employment status was true, or she believed it to be true, then no laws were broken - in that area anyway.