A story by students at the UC Berkeley Graduate School of Journalism, published in the Dallas Morning News and supported by the Fund, exposed universities’ use of a high-tech tool to spy on students, prompting the University of North Carolina to drop the system and sparking investigations at 11 universities in seven states. Reporters Arijit Sen and Dereka Bennett found that a tool that was developed to identify mental health issues was instead being used by some universities to monitor students’ protest activity. After the story ran, a state senator in North Carolina launched an inquiry into state colleges’ use of the program, and student journalists in several states began looking into how their campuses used the program.
Grantee probe of colleges using AI program to spy on students spurs investigations at 11 universities
