Rehema met Asha in the cafeteria at lunchtime carrying rice, beans, and passion juice, but she did not touch the food for five minutes.
“I asked my father,” she said. “Now I wish I had not.”
“What does he know?”
“He knows I missed a club rehearsal last week. He knows I changed tutorial groups. He knows my bursary file is still incomplete.”
“Did you tell him those things?”
“Maybe the rehearsal. Not the tutorial group. We do talk about the bursary because he helps with documents.”
They had agreed not to trade screenshots full of other people’s names. Instead, they made a paper table: information, who at home knew it, when they knew it, possible source.
For Asha’s absence, the source remained unknown. For Rehema’s club rehearsal, one possible route was a student committee member whose parent belonged to the group. For bursary information, Rehema’s father legitimately knew her application number because he had helped submit paperwork—but that still did not explain why her status appeared in a table shared with other parents.
“My dad says someone posts bursary reminders,” Rehema said. “He thought it came from the welfare office.”
“What made him think that?”
“A screenshot of a list.”
Her father sent the relevant section. It was not identical to Asha’s screenshot. It was a smaller table headed **Parent Support — Pending Docs**, with names, missing documents, and deadlines.
“So there are different tables,” Rehema said.
“Or different lists being copied into one master table.”
They went to the student noticeboard. The public bursary announcement listed deadlines and required documents but no names. That meant the individual statuses came from somewhere else.
At Rehema’s club office, the chair, Joel, confirmed that the club kept an internal attendance sheet for planning but had never authorized parent distribution.
“Who can access it?” Rehema asked.
“Six committee members.”
“Does one of them have a parent in the parent group?”
Joel frowned. “I don’t know.”
Asha stopped the conversation from becoming a list of suspects. “We do not need names. Can you confirm that the sheet is internal and not a parent-communication tool?”
“Yes.”
Joel agreed to tighten permissions and remind the committee not to circulate individual participation outside the club without permission. Even if the sheet turned out not to be the source, the risk was real enough to close.
Back at the cafeteria, Asha and Rehema ran a second test. Each wrote down five pieces of information she had made public herself and five she had not. They compared those with what parents seemed to know. Rehema’s general club membership was public. Her weekly rehearsal pattern was not. Asha’s internship interview was not in the parent system. Her absence was.
The distinction made the problem clearer. Public information, private information, and inferred information were all being collected in one place as if they were equivalent.
Rehema messaged her father: *If you want to know something about me, ask me before asking the parent group.*
He did not become defensive. He replied that he had assumed the group existed to help and promised to send her anything about her before believing it.
That small response mattered. Repair could begin in one relationship before the university wrote any policy.
Then Rehema zoomed back into the bursary screenshot her father had sent.
“Wait.”
“What?”
“This note under my name.”
It read: *club active — Tue/Thu evening.*
Rehema sat straighter. “That is not bursary information.”
“And it is not a general notice.”
“My dad knew I joined a club. He did not know the days.”
For the first time, they had evidence that a single record was combining information from unrelated parts of a student’s life.
Rehema’s club schedule was in it.