IMPLEMENTATION GUIDE

The Cover Name Collective offers a model for documenting student authorship when using a legal name could expose a student or their family to risk. This guide provides a clear path for creating a small, faculty-run, offline registry that safeguards authorship without centralizing sensitive data. The goal is to keep accurate, analog records that a student can later use to verify authorship when it is safe to do so.

In practice, the process is simple. A student who has already published, presented, or exhibited work under a pseudonym fills out the Cover Name Collective Registration Form by hand. The form records the pseudonym they used, the title and venue of their work, and—if they choose—the name they hope to use professionally in the future. The student signs the form, then asks a faculty advisor or project lead to sign, confirming that the work exists and that the student was involved. A third person, often a friend or classmate, acts as a witness to verify that the pseudonym and the student belong to the same individual.

Once complete, the form is handed to a local registrar—a faculty member or trusted colleague—who seals it and passes it into a private chain of custody. From that point, the record leaves the student’s hands and enters the Collective’s distributed network of trust, where it remains entirely offline until it is safe to release.

1. Define the Purpose Locally

Begin by clearly stating why your version of the Collective exists.

Focus on academic freedom, authorship protection, and student safety.
Make clear that the system is not legal protection or advice; it is a documentation process that preserves authorship evidence for future use.
Ensure that all participants (students, faculty, and witnesses) understand the purpose before any forms are completed.

2. Establish a Chain of Trust

The core of the model is distributed trust, a recordkeeping structure without centralized digital storage.

Identify one or two faculty members who will act as registrars (the people who accept forms).
After a form is received, it should be passed to a trusted intermediary, who may pass it again, creating a small, private network of custodians.
No one person, including the project’s public face, should know where all records are kept.

The safest record is one that cannot be seized, hacked, or digitally traced.

3. Use Paper Forms Only

All forms should be printed, filled out by hand, and signed in ink.

Do not store forms online, scan them, or send them via email.
Use a neutral, archival-quality storage method (sealed envelope, file folder, locked box).
Each form should include:
- Pseudonym and project details
- Optional identifying information (the protected name, not necessarily the legal one)
- Faculty and witness signatures
- Student acknowledgment of terms

You may adapt the Cover Name Collective Registration Form provided here under a CC BY-NC-SA license.

4. Train and Inform Participants

Faculty advisors sign to confirm the student’s participation in the work.
Independent witnesses (any trusted person) verify that the pseudonym and student identity match.
Students are informed that their record will remain offline and will only be made public when safe. A short conversation before signing is as important as the form itself: it ensures mutual understanding and consent.

5. Maintain Independence

This model is not affiliated with or operated by any university system.

Do not store forms in university offices or on institutional servers.
Avoid using institutional email or cloud storage for correspondence.
The registry exists outside formal administrative structures to ensure independence and protection from data requests.

Institutional distance is a form of care. Independence safeguards both faculty and students.

6. Plan for Future Verification

Outline how authorship may be reclaimed when it becomes safe:

Establish that records will remain sealed indefinitely until human rights and privacy protections are restored.
When the time comes, the custodial network should contact students (if possible) and assist in verifying their authorship.
Faculty should provide public documentation of their role in the project without retaining access to individual student data.

7. Communicate Transparently

When introducing your version of the Collective on campus:

Publish a short statement of purpose explaining that this is an ethical recordkeeping initiative, not a legal service.
Be explicit that faculty and witnesses’ names will eventually be made public alongside authorship records.
Invite other departments to adapt or collaborate, but keep record custody small and local.

8. Review Annually

Recordkeeping is an ongoing ethical practice. Each year, review your process to ensure:

All stored forms are intact and secure.
The custodial network still exists and understands its responsibilities.
Any changes in law, policy, or institutional risk are accounted for.
If the Collective needs to continue.

9. (Eventually) End the Collective.

The Cover Name Collective is meant to be temporary. It is a structure of protection for a particular historical moment when some students could not safely claim their authorship. A guide to dissolving the Collective is below.

Roles and Responsibilities

The Cover Name Collective model relies on a small network of trusted individuals, each with a clearly defined and limited role.

The Student initiates the process after publishing or presenting under a pseudonym. Their responsibility is to complete the form accurately and choose faculty and witnesses they trust.
The Faculty Advisor or Project Lead confirms that the work exists and that the student was involved. This is not a legal or institutional certification; it is a good-faith acknowledgment of participation.
The Independent Witness can be anyone—a friend, peer, or community member—who can verify that the student and pseudonym refer to the same person.
The Registrar (usually a faculty member) receives the completed form, seals it, and transfers it into the distributed network. The registrar’s duty is to preserve confidentiality and avoid centralization. They do not store all records personally, nor do they digitize or track them.

Custody may be rotated periodically to ensure that no one person holds long-term control. Over time, records may move through multiple hands, each transfer maintaining the project’s core ethic: distributed trust.

Recommended Practices for Registrars

Registrars are the custodians of the Cover Name Collective recordkeeping process. Their role is built on careful custody, not control. Their role is to hold forms safely and discreetly without creating new risks or points of exposure.

1. Accepting Forms

Receive completed forms in person only. Never accept scanned or emailed versions.
Review the form briefly to ensure that all required signatures are present.
Confirm that the student understands the purpose of the project and that their information will remain offline. Here’s a sample script:
- Thank you for bringing this form. Before I accept it, I just want to make sure you understand what will happen next. Once I take this form, I’ll seal it and pass it into the Cover Name Collective network, a small, private chain of custody that keeps records offline. From this point forward, it leaves your hands and becomes part of a distributed recordkeeping system based entirely on trust. The record will stay sealed until it’s safe to make public, at a time when students like you are no longer at risk of harm or targeting for their work. This isn’t a legal process or a university archive; it’s a way to preserve proof of authorship so that you can later verify your contribution if you choose to. My role is only to receive the record and ensure it’s handled with care. After this, I’ll no longer have direct access to it, and I won’t know exactly where it’s stored. That’s intentional, to protect everyone involved. Do you have any questions before I accept the form?

2. Handling and Storage

Place the form in a sealed envelope labeled with the pseudonym only and the date received.
Do not maintain a list linking pseudonyms to student names.
Store envelopes in a secure, private location such as a locked drawer, box, or filing cabinet.
Avoid institutional storage spaces that could be subject to administrative or legal access (department offices, university archives, shared drives, etc.).

Best practice: treat these documents as personal custodial items, not as official records. They are held in trust, not owned by any institution.

3. Passing Custody

Registrars should not hold all records indefinitely. After a reasonable period (e.g., at the end of each academic year), transfer custody to a trusted intermediary, maybe another faculty member or community archivist.
The registrar should know only the person they give records to, not the full chain of custody.
Each handoff should be discreet, analog, and undocumented beyond a simple note inside the sealed box or envelope (e.g., “Transferred May 2026”).

4. Maintaining Independence

Avoid connecting this process to official university channels, online forms, or identifiable institutional branding.
Correspondence about records should happen in person or by secure, non-institutional means.
Keep your role as registrar transparent but limited. You facilitate trust, not data management.

5. Rotation and Exit Planning

If a registrar retires, relocates, or otherwise needs to step away, they should identify a successor and pass along the records privately.
Maintain at least one other person who understands the model to prevent knowledge loss.
Document only the existence of the system, not its participants, in any departmental materials.

End the Collective

1. Determine When It Is Safe

Before releasing any records, the custodians of the Collective must reach a reasonable and collective determination of safety.
Ending the project should happen only when:

Constitutional and human rights violations by ICE or related agencies have ceased in practice, not only in law.
Students named in the records are no longer at risk of harm, targeting, or surveillance because of their authorship, immigration status, or family connections.
Freedom of expression and academic participation are consistently protected for students of all statuses and backgrounds.

This judgment should be made collectively by multiple current and former custodians, ideally in consultation with legal experts, immigrant rights advocates, and affected communities.

2. Reconstitute the Network

Once safety has been reasonably established:

Identify and contact current and former registrars who may still hold sealed records or boxes.
Rebuild a map of custody, tracing where records may have moved.
Use discretion and patience — this may take time, especially if the chain of trust spanned many hands or locations.

If possible, create a temporary coordinating group. For example, a small team of faculty and archivists responsible for managing the reconstitution and public transition.

3. Notify Former Participants

Before publication, make every effort to contact the individuals whose names appear on the forms:

Use the most recent contact information available, but do not search public records or institutional data without consent.
Invite each person to confirm whether they wish to:
- Reassociate their legal name with their pseudonym publicly,
- Keep their pseudonym as their permanent identifier, or
- Withdraw their record entirely.
Respect all choices without question.

If a student cannot be reached, their record should remain sealed until sufficient time has passed or guidance can be obtained from the broader community of practice.

4. Transition from Protection to Recognition

Once consent is gathered, the records can begin to be formally unsealed and archived.

Each record should be opened in the presence of at least two custodians.
A copy may be made for archival deposit, but the original should remain preserved in analog form.
Create a public register of pseudonyms and authorship pairs only for those who have explicitly consented.
Consider donating the full archive to a university special collections library or public humanities archive, with a clear preface explaining its origins and ethical framework.

5. Publicly Document the Closure

When the final records have been safely transitioned, the custodians should:

Publish a closure statement explaining the end of the Collective and the conditions that made it possible.
Include reflections on what the project accomplished, what it protected, and what it made visible.
Credit all faculty, librarians, and community members who sustained it — and, when permitted, the authors who once needed it.

This statement can live on the project website, in an academic journal, or within the donated archive.

6. Leave an Ethical Record

Finally, leave behind a written guide or report for future scholars and activists documenting:

How the system worked,
What risks it responded to,
How students and faculty used it,
What it meant to those involved.

The end of the Collective should serve as evidence of a moment in higher education when faculty acted to protect their students’ intellectual freedom and dignity.