On Thursday, March 27, Bowdoin received a letter from the House of Representatives’ Committee on Education and Workforce investigating the College’s response to the Students for Justice in Palestine encampment in February. The committee requested that the College submit all documents related to disciplinary action taken against students or faculty for their involvement in the encampment, a description of how the encampment disbanded and a complete list of all student disciplinary cases since October 7, 2023 involving antisemitic incidents by April 10 at noon.

As of this article being published, President Safa Zaki and other College administrators have not released updates on how the College responded to the requests from the committee by yesterday’s deadline. Both Zaki and Senior Vice President for Communications and Public Affairs Scott Hood declined to provide the Orient with further commentary after the original campus statement released on March 29.

In that statement, Zaki acknowledged the letter and how the College would respond.

“We are in the process of reviewing the letter, and I want to reassure you that we are confident that our policies and practices are in full compliance with the law,” Zaki wrote in the email to campus.

The American Association of University Professors legal counsel released a report to the Orient urging colleges and universities to maintain student privacy laws when submitting documents to federal agencies. The report also evaluates the legality of federal bodies requesting personal student information for Title VI investigations.

“Requests for personally identifiable information such as names can likely never be issued on a blanket basis across a broad set of Title VI investigations, since the need to divulge this information would depend on a fact-specific determination of its relevance in the context of a specific investigation,” the report read.

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act prohibits educational institutions from disclosing personally identifiable information about students unless a court order or subpoena is issued. The report also affirmed that disclosure of immigration status would rarely be relevant to investigations of antisemitism on college campuses.

“Demands to higher education institutions that they provide the names and nationalities of students and faculty are not justified by federal agencies’ enforcement responsibilities under Title VI,” the report read. “They also, and independently, violate the First Amendment by unlawfully targeting students and faculty because of the content of their speech and by chilling their rights to freedom of speech and association.”

The report concludes by stating that colleges and universities releasing student information would be a violation of First Amendment rights for students and that such information should not be provided to congressional committees.