Student Data Protection Statement

How your information is used by the College

We collect and process your personal information, as specified below, for a number of purposes, including:

A. maintaining your personal details, including ensuring effective communications with you;

B. maintaining a formal record of your academic progress and achievements at the College, the University of Cambridge and elsewhere;

C. maintaining a formal record of your other engagements with and achievements at the College, the University of Cambridge and elsewhere;

D. maintaining a record, where appropriate, of any particular personal needs you require to be met in order to participate fully in College and University life (including any support needs that are, or have been, provided by the College or the University during your course of studies), as well as information about your general health and wellbeing;

E. maintaining financial records relating to your studies, your funding and other financial support arrangements;

F. provision of references to third parties;

G. maintaining a record of your behaviour and in particular where there have been concerns or complaints raised about you;

H. maintaining a record of any complaints you make to the College and their outcomes;

I. maintaining data to enable the College and the University to produce statistics and research for internal and statutory reporting purposes.

Further details are provided in the Annex. If you have concerns or queries about any of these purposes, please contact us at the address given below, or speak to the Bursar.

We operate CCTV on our sites, which will capture footage, and a SALTO lock system. Further details of the College’s CCTV system and procedures can be found in our CCTV Policy. If you have any questions regarding the College's CCTV please contact the Head Porter head.porter@caths.cam.ac.uk. The SALTO lock system controls door access, and will by its nature record movements in and out of staircases and some College rooms, though this is not its primary purpose. Like all data we store, this information is kept confidentially. Please also contact the Head Porter head.porter@caths.cam.ac.uk if you have questions about the SALTO lock system.

We also operate wifi across our sites, which can be accessed by members of the College and guests. We retain device information (such as physical MAC address and IP address) and details of the IP address the device connected to. The data is retained for 3 months.

Please note that if you engage with us for any other purpose (e.g. you work for us, or volunteer for us), there are additional data protection statements that you will be provided with for those other purposes, usually at the first point of engagement.

How long we keep your information for

In general your full tutorial file is retained permanently. This is to ensure that a sufficient record of your academic achievements for references and other related purposes, and your time at the College is maintained. The usual contents of an archived tutorial file consist of:

• Application form and interview records
• Immigration checks
• Grants and bursaries applied for and received
• Student Loan Company information
• Tenancy agreements
• Disciplinary and/or grievance matters
• Supervision reports
• Student support documentation, health assessments and medical information
• Exam entries and results
• References
• Photograph
• Correspondence

Finally, we strongly encourage all of our students to remain in touch with the College after they leave and, for that reason, we transfer a subset of this information to our Alumni and Development Office. You are encouraged to read our separate statement about personal information for alumni, which covers your ongoing lifelong membership of the College, at https://www.caths.cam.ac.uk/about-us/college-documents/data-protection/alumni-and-other-supporters-data-protection-statement.

How we share your personal information

Within the College

We share the following information with relevant people within the College: name, year, course of study, Tutor, Director of Studies (DoS), crs id, citizenship, College room and telephone number. Again, this is considered necessary for the College to operate smoothly but you can request a greater level of privacy by contacting the Tutorial Office.

The College also takes photographs of its students, either individually and/or as a group in matriculation and graduation photographs. These are widely used within the College and may appear in the St Catharine’s Magazine or be on public display.

Otherwise, the College restricts the sharing of your personal information within the College in line with the confidentiality clauses in its employment contracts.

With the University

By being a member of a College and registering for a course of study, you are automatically a member of the University of Cambridge. The academic and student support arrangements between the College and the University of Cambridge are complex and varied depending on your course and level of study. Information relating to you (and particularly your academic studies) is shared routinely and often with the University, and the University and its partners (including the College) have a data sharing agreement to govern such interactions and information transfers in both directions, as well as a shared student record system and database.

The personal information shared with the University will include only that which is necessary for you to undertake and complete your studies and your examinations, and in addition will include any information necessary for the College to fulfil its obligations and agreements with the University about the shared University community (including sufficient information for the University to record and collate instances of student behaviour or complaints across all of the Colleges and the University). Where possible, the College will notify you of its intention to share such data in advance.

The University is a separate legal entity to the College and has its own statement about your personal information and its procedures, which you can view at: https://www.information-compliance.admin.cam.ac.uk/data-protection/student-data. It in turn shares information with the affiliated student unions and a number of other bodies for statutory and other purposes.

With other organisations

The College routinely shares information with, and receives information from, where appropriate:

• the Cambridge City Council and other local authorities (to provide evidence of any rights to or exemptions from local services and taxes, including electoral registration and council tax);
• Upay cashless payment provider;
• your funding providers or sponsors, as agreed with them and/or you, including the Student Loans Company;
• Universities and Colleges Admissions Service (in relation to your application, offer and requirements to meet any offer of study).

We may also be subject to a legal requirement (with or without your consent) to share your personal information with some government agencies under special circumstances (e.g. relating to crime or health and safety), such as the police or security services or other statutory authorities with investigatory powers. Where possible, the College will notify you of its intention to share such information in advance.

We will normally provide confirmation of your qualifications and other academic references to a prospective employer or financial sponsor if it is reasonably clear that it would be in your interests to do so, and we have made reasonable checks to ensure the information is being requested for that purpose.

We may also provide personal information to agencies and trusted advisers in order to receive professional advice or guidance in relation to a number of matters (examples of such advice include legal and audit services, fee status verification services, intercollegiate agreement services) or to provide services to you through a third party on our behalf. In such circumstances, data sharing agreements are in place to ensure your personal information is not retained by them for longer than necessary or otherwise shared more widely.

The College may share information with organisations overseas as part of arrangements related to your membership of the College (e.g. field trip, student exchange programme, an overseas funding provider). In most cases, this will be related to the operation of a contract.

Publication of your personal information

Matriculation photographs and information (full name, degree subject and matriculation year) are published each year in the St Catharine’s Magazine, which is sent to alumni and friends of the College (such as next of kin for recently deceased alumni) and is available on the Society website. Magazine content is collated and prepared for publication by the editorial board, which includes Fellows, staff, students and alumni of the College, and alumni editors will have signed a Non-Disclosure Agreement with the College if their responsibilities include access to College records in order to process these personal data.

We would encourage you to be careful when sharing personal information about other students in public social media sites and other similar environments.  

Please also note that the University’s people search function may also be widened to be accessible to the general public by changing the settings at http://www.lookup.cam.ac.uk/self: its default setting is otherwise access to all members of the University and all Colleges: we share this because we believe it helps significantly in building community relations and networks and helps others get in touch with you easily.

Your rights

You have the right: to ask us for access to, rectification or erasure of your personal information; to restrict processing (pending correction or deletion); to object to communications; and to ask for the transfer of your personal information electronically to a third party (data portability).

Some of these rights are not automatic, and we reserve the right to discuss with you why we might not comply with a request from you to exercise them.

If you have questions or concerns about your personal information, or how it is used, please speak to the relevant College staff in the first instance. If you need further guidance, please contact the Bursar, data.protection@caths.cam.ac.uk.

If you remain unhappy with the way your information is being handled, or with the response received from us, you have the right to lodge a complaint with the Information Commissioner’s Office at Wycliffe House, Water Lane, Wilmslow, SK9 5AF (https://ico.org.uk/).