Musa Ndege’s office was smaller than Asha expected for someone whose name appeared on so many student-support notices. A half-dead plant leaned toward the window. Colored binders filled one shelf. A poster on the wall said: **Ask before you conclude.**
Asha nearly laughed.
“I came to ask before I conclude,” she said.
“That is a good start,” Musa replied.
She did not begin with the spreadsheet. She asked for every form she had signed during orientation. Musa found the electronic enrollment record and printed her emergency-contact form.
There was Mariam Kilonzo’s name and number. The language beneath it was clear: the university could contact the emergency person in cases involving safety, health, or situations where the student could not communicate for herself. There was no permission for routine attendance, grades, bursary status, or club activity to be sent home.
“Is there a parent portal?” Asha asked.
“Not for adult first-year students.”
“Can attendance be sent to parents by default?”
“No.”
“Grades?”
“No.”
“Bursary status?”
“Family can be involved in a specific support case if the student asks for it, or if documents require a sponsor’s participation. Not through a general parent distribution list.”
Only then did Asha place a redacted printout of the spreadsheet on his desk.
Musa stared at it. “Where did this come from?”
“A parents’ group.”
“Official?”
“That is what I came to ask.”
“I do not know this group.”
“But parents think it is connected to the university.”
“Why?”
“It uses university colors. Real notices appear there. People who volunteered during orientation helped circulate it.”
Musa moved closer. “If people believe it is official when it is not, that is a problem. But let us be precise. The university does have parent engagement sessions, volunteers, emergency contacts, and some general family notices. None of those automatically make a parent-created chat an official academic channel.”
“So the university did not notify my mother that I missed class?”
“Not through the system I can see. Your absence was entered at 5:08. There is no outgoing notification to your emergency contact.”
“Then someone shared it.”
“Possibly a student, class source, screenshot, or informal relay. I will not guess.”
Asha hated the answer because it was cautious, but caution was exactly what she had demanded from herself.
Musa then let her read the full consent pack. One clause allowed student-support staff to contact the student when attendance patterns raised concern. Asha asked whether that meant staff could call a parent. Musa said the first contact was the student; emergency procedures or specific consent would govern any family involvement.
He also admitted that university staff had sometimes forwarded public notices to parent volunteers during orientation. “That may have helped create confusion,” he said. “We benefited from volunteers spreading general information but did not always state the boundary clearly.”
It was the first time an official person acknowledged that the institution had contributed to the ambiguity without claiming the spreadsheet itself was official.
Asha asked for a list of recognized communication channels. Musa printed it: student portal, student email, emergency-contact process, welfare support, public family notices. No parent attendance group existed.
She then asked whether students could see who had accessed their information. Musa said there was no simple dashboard covering every category, though the principle of transparency was reasonable and could be raised with IT. Asha wrote it down as a future request, not a promise.
The emergency form and her internship folder ended up together in her bag. They seemed unrelated, but both represented the same thing: being an adult meant making choices and carrying consequences, not becoming the subject of decisions made invisibly by others.
At the door, Musa called her back.
“Asha.”
She turned.
“The group you showed me is not on any official channel list. If that is the group you mean, then I need to say this clearly: it is not an official university group.”