Attorney General: Request to Preserve Spring 2020 Records

The University at Albany was recently served with a class action in which it was alleged that because of the campus’s response to the Novel Coronavirus Disease 2019 (“COVID-19”) pandemic, students lost the benefit of the education for which they paid, and/or the services or which their fees were paid, without having their tuition and fees refunded to them.

In anticipation that a similar action may be brought against SUNY Oswego, the Office of the Attorney General has requested we impose a litigation hold relating to records you potentially created and/or maintain pertaining to Spring 2020 courses. It is imperative that you properly and securely store ALL academic records and do not destroy them, even after the normal retention period for said records has been met.

At this time, the request for records is a “hold in place” – meaning SUNY Oswego and its employees do not have to send anything yet. However, we are each being asked to maintain the records and be able to produce them when/if the time comes that they are requested.

Note: This issue is confidential. Please do not discuss the matter with anyone other than Mary Toale, Executive Assistant to the President and/or Sean Moriarty, Chief Technology Officer.

If you have actively deleted any pertinent e-mails (i.e., moved to your deleted items folder), you must ensure they are not permanently deleted. Please remove the files from the “trash” folder and place them back into your mailbox.

Any faculty or staff member who taught one or more Spring 2020 course(s) or assisted in transitioning courses to an online format must NOT delete the following, if applicable:**             

• Zoom and Blackboard Collaborate recordings
• Google Classroom recordings
• OnCourse recordings
• Camtasia recordings
• Ensemble recordings, Panopto recordings 
• Instructional documents not stored on any of the spaces being preserved by Campus Technology Services 
• Examples include: PowerPoint slides, Office documents, other
• Non-College External Sources
• Examples include: Publisher Content, Personally Hosted websites, Box, DropBox, Non-College WordPress, other external digital services
• Personal Devices and Services used for instructional activity
• Examples include: Facebook, email to/from non-College account, text messages, tweets, YouTube, other digital recordings
• Personal notes related to instructional activities

**When in doubt about whether to preserve materials for purposes of litigation, preserve.

We appreciate your diligence to secure and maintain records in your possession so that we are well-prepared should the Office of the Attorney General move forward with litigation.

Thank you,

Mary C. Toale
Executive Assistant to the President