Alabama Tracking Students' Locations To Penalize Them For Leaving Games Early

guest · Sep 14, 2019

Crimson Tide Track Locations to Keep Students at Games
September 14, 2019
https://www.nytimes.com/2019/09/12/sports/alabama-tracking-app.html

Saban, the Alabama football coach, has long been peeved that the student section at Bryant-Denny Stadium empties early. So this season, the university is rewarding students who attend games — and stay until the fourth quarter — with an alluring prize: improved access to tickets [...]

But to do this, Alabama is taking an extraordinary, Orwellian step: using location-tracking technology from students’ phones to see who skips out and who stays.

“It’s kind of like Big Brother,” said Allison Isidore, a graduate student in religious studies from Montclair, N.J.
Alabama isn’t the only college tapping into student data; the University of North Carolina uses location-tracking technology to see whether its football players and other athletes are in class.

But Adam Schwartz, a lawyer for the Electronic Frontier Foundation, a privacy watchdog, said it was “very alarming” that a public university — an arm of the government — was tracking its students’ whereabouts.
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The Tide Loyalty Points program works like this: Students, who typically pay about $10 for home tickets, download the app and earn 100 points for attending a home game and an additional 250 for staying until the fourth quarter. Those points augment ones they garner mostly from progress they have made toward their degrees — 100 points per credit hour. (A regular load would be 15 credits per semester, or 1,500 points.)
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chrisretusn · Sep 16, 2019

I really don't see an issue here. It's not like the university is forcing the students to do this. Want to earn points? Download the App and stay until the 4th quarter. Want to leave early, then do so, don't collection the extra 250 points. Students are not forced to install the App or use it.

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Alabama Tracking Students' Locations To Penalize Them For Leaving Games Early

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Alabama Tracking Students' Locations To Penalize Them For Leaving Games Early

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