Funny story about FERPA laws:
I had a horrendous professor for Calc I. Not only was he a horrible teacher of mathematics (couldn't explain a thing he was doing), he also ran his class like a prison. He would mark you late if you were literally 1 second late to the class (which meant you got 1/2 credit for that day's attendance).
He was always quoting "FERPA" as a reason not to give out blind distributions of grades after tests. His tests were horrendous, so we just wanted to know where we stood amongst the class. He never curved, hard grader, etc.
He kept all of his attendance on an Excel spreadsheet and he put it up on the overhead projector at the front of the class. He'd check you off as he mispronounced your name, starting right as the clock ticked off for class to begin. He'd spend a good 5 minutes taking attendance because his pronunciation of your name was likely to be wrong and he went very slow.
Anyway, one day this idiot of a professor fires up his laptop attached to the overhead and he's got a girl's grades plastered all over the front. It was there for a good 5 minutes before somebody alerted him. The whole semester he was always harping on FERPA and how he protects everyone's grades to the fullest extent...until he is sloppy enough to leave a poor girl's "" plastered all over the front of the room. Lucky for him, the girl wasn't there that day, otherwise WWIII would have erupted (she was an angry black female that had gotten into disputes with the professor before).
