10/12/2026
A student filed a records request last semester at a university in the midwest.
They wanted to know what their campus surveillance system had captured about their movements over a thirty day period, who had accessed that footage, and whether any of it had been shared outside the institution.
The university could not answer the third question.
Not because they were hiding something. Because they genuinely did not know. The surveillance infrastructure on their campus was operated through a vendor platform, and the data sharing terms in that platform gave the vendor discretion over disclosure that the university had never fully reviewed when they signed the agreement.
That records request became a student newspaper story. That story became a faculty senate resolution. That resolution became a board agenda item that nobody in university leadership had been prepared to have.
The institutions that can answer every surveillance question a student, a journalist, or a trustee might ask did not get lucky. They chose the right integrator and kept ownership of every piece of data their campus generates.
Critical Edge builds higher education security systems where the university owns every answer.
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