Some San Jose State community members have mixed opinions regarding a recent Zoom update requiring all California State University campuses to indefinitely store class recordings.
Kinesiology junior Molly Sheridan said she doesn’t understand why Zoom would need to keep recordings on its cloud “forever.”
“I feel like I can understand if they save it for a little bit of time, but forever is kind of suspicious to me,” Sheridan said. “It’s like an invasion of privacy because I know in one of my sociology classes, we record the Zoom every week and sometimes people say things that are really personal about their life.”
Following the recent switch to online classes, the CSU Office of General Counsel began advising all 23 CSU campuses about preserving records. SJSU Information Security Officer Hien Huynh stated in a Nov. 12 campuswide email that Zoom content will be stored because SJSU has a legal obligation to preserve certain records because of ongoing litigation.
According to the Zoom website, the Zoom cloud is automatically enabled for all paid subscribers and when a meeting is recorded, audio and chat messages are also recorded on the Zoom cloud.
Kinesiology junior Jomari Dela Paz said he understands why these recordings are being preserved on the Zoom cloud, especially if it's a matter regarding behavior.
“Let’s say if a student acts up and is doing something he shouldn’t be doing on a Zoom call, the evidence is there and a teacher could use that against them,” Dela Paz said.
Huynh stated in the email that Zoom recordings stored on a laptop or computer, not on the Zoom cloud, can be deleted.
SJSU political science professor Matthew Record said he thinks there’s a pretty strong argument to be made that recording Zoom classes is an invasion of student privacy. He added that SJSU storing the recordings raises strong equity concerns.
“As a teacher, we have to balance the needs of maintaining something akin to a rigorous classroom environment. On the other hand, students did not sign up to make their personal lives available for the sort of ‘gawking of me or other classmates,’ ” Record said over the phone.
Along with an invasion of privacy, he also said that this update could lead to students feeling more uncomfortable in class.
“I think that having the recording have a permanent record [and] the difference of the environment that the students are inhabiting only exacerbates [feelings of violation],” Record said.
However, the update does not require professors to record classes, training or any other sessions, according to the Nov. 12 email.
Dela Paz said students should give Zoom calls being recorded and if no questionable behavior happens, they shouldn’t be stored in the cloud.
“If there's nothing substantially important with the recording then I feel as if it should be discarded,” Dela Paz said. “If some crazy stuff were to happen then at that moment, yes it would be important to archive it.”
