The thing about this story that jumps out at me the most is that any college would have a policy against recording classroom lectures. The whole purpose of classes is for the students to attend and learn and retain the supposed knowledge imparted by the lecturer.
Students relied on note taking for generations, but now most every student has a handy, miniature recording device. Why wouldn’t every student want at least an audio recording to fill in parts of a lecture where their notes might be inadequate? And why would any school object that their students have even better means to learn from lectures?
The only answer I can think of is that the lecturers, and school administrations, do not want recorded, indisputable evidence of what the lecturers said in class.
Maybe the schools should have a policy, not to prohibit recording lectures, but to require lecturers to stick to their course subject and keep personal political opinions out of their lectures.
I don’t think the school actually has a rule against recording. I do think that recording without two party permission is against California state law however. I looked at OCC’s student code of conduct that I found online and it did not have any such restriction. That doesn’t mean that what I saw was the complete document of course, however as other posters have stated here before, it has not been unusual for students to record lectures for decades. Maybe since I’ve been in college things have changed, and the increasing litigiousness of society has prompted a change in policy, but I doubt it.
Some professors use the misguided notion that their lectures are “intellectual property”. However there are some problems if the professor is showing a film or something that’s copyrighted. The question in this case was that recording without consent is illegal in California if what is being recorded is private. The problem, and this is why I think the suspension was thrown out, is a classroom lecture at a public institution private? I would say no, but I’m not a lawyer.
There are also a lot of schools that encourage the faculty member to record all or parts of a lecture for the students in the class. There are many schools that invest a lot of money into equipment and software for this. Students can sign into portals to get the material. I also think of the open courseware from places like MIT and UC-Berkely that are well recorded past lectures. So unless the College was providing the recording, I don’t see any reason for a student to not be able to record.
I always encourage my students to record my lectures,I have nothing to hide. Most of my students don’t take notes, they snap pictures of the blackboard with their phones while I’m teaching.
I did read something about this incident where they said the school doesn’t want the professor recorded because they don’t want people to pass it on to other students who are too lazy to attend the class.