MetroLab Network Student Cup Competition
Sharilyn Clark 3L and Katrice Williams '23 represented a five-person student team of law and social work students from Cleveland State University at the MetroLab Network Student Cup Competition, which was established in 2020 to recognize, amplify, and support impactful collaborations between students and city governments. Students from participating MetroLab universities that work in partnership with government and/or community collaboratives on civic technology, data, and innovation projects, competed for a $1,000 prize. The CSU team, led by Katrice and Sharilyn, won the competition.
Sharilyn and Katrice presented on their participation in the Data Privacy and Equity Assessment Clinic, which was supported by the CSU TECH Hubb, IoT Collaborative, and a $90,000 research grant from the Public-Interest Technology University Network (PIT-UN), and their recommendations to the Oakland Privacy Advisory Commission (PAC). Their recommendations highlighted the consumer privacy concerns with a demand-responsive mobile parking payment system, and equity considerations with increased deployment of automatic license plate reader technology in low-to-middle income communities.
The MetroLab competition was part of a larger annual summit that brought together 200+ local government leaders, innovators, and academic researchers from across the civic ecosystem that focuses on ecosystems and climate resiliency, infrastructure, data, and partnership.
"The MetroLab Student Cup allowed my partner, Sharilyn Clark, and I to present our team's work and learn how consumer privacy protections are important for mobile parking technology, and a lesser researched area of police surveillance. Although our project did not explicitly explore police surveillance technology, it did introduce us to automatic license plate reader (ALPR) technology that is often used - and, sometimes, abused - by law enforcement agencies that do not take steps to protect consumers' data or prohibit it from being shared with agencies that could use it to create unlawful or wrongful arrests. I was excited to participate in this opportunity because it allowed me to connect with other researchers and data analysts in my field of interest." – Katrice Williams.
"Competing in the MetroLab Network's 2023 Student Cup was a phenomenal experience! My colleague Katrice Williams and I were invited to present our team's data privacy and equity impact assessment to an audience of government leaders and technology professionals. We completed the project with three additional classmates and, together, we applied knowledge gathered from the classroom, our advisors, and our different lived experiences. We researched and determined there were at least ten recommendations we could make to lower privacy and equity risks raised by proposed technologies for Oakland, CA. The Student Cup competition was tough! The projects were strategically carried out to ensure the most equitable innovative solutions for each respective city. I hope that more government leaders proactively consider the impacts of innovation and development on the most vulnerable groups within their communities and that more graduate-level students participate in hands-on equity-based research projects." – Sharilyn Clark