Since the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act was passed, college students no longer worry about parents seeing their grades — and they shouldn’t have to worry about courts seeing them either.

Cook County, Ill., prosecutors have no right to subpoena Northwestern University students’ grades because of their investigation of an inmate facing life in prison.

For three years, students participating in the Medill Innocence Project had been investigating prisoner Anthony McKinney, convicted of murdering a security guard in 1978.

They found police coerced confessions, which caused the courts to rethink and reverse their verdicts.

Illinois prosecutors subpoenaed teacher David Protess to review students’ grades, e-mails and course syllabi, because they suspected a correlation between receiving an “A” in the class and proving the prisoner’s innocence.

However, grades have nothing to do with a prisoner’s verdict. Students have good intentions in trying to free wrongfully convicted prisoners.

They aren’t muckraking for grades, especially when they spend years researching old crimes and don’t always end up with a result.

Students don’t seek to prove every inmate’s innocence. In fact, in some cases, students were equally rewarded for finding evidence that supported the court’s original ruling.

Students don’t receive Fs when they find evidence that prisoners are guilty.

Furthermore, students have a right to their academic information, which is protected by the FERPA.

FERPA can disclose records without consent in cases of judicial order or lawfully issued subpoenas.

While the county is within its rights to subpoena, its actions are unnecessary. Asking for grades now doesn’t relate to proving a prisoner’s innocence or guilt.

Prosecutors should question witnesses the Innocence Project brought to the case rather than student investigators.

The students are merely researching. They aren’t inherently involved in the case — Cook County prosecutors are grasping at straws.

Plus, the Medill Innocence Project has enjoyed success. Because of their efforts in freeing 11 prisoners and five death row inmates, Gov. George Ryan issued a moratorium on Illinois’ death penalty.

Prosecutors may feel threatened by the project’s successful research, and are misunderstanding students’ thoughtful intentions with just getting an “A.”

This is a slippery slope. Once prosecutors subpoena grades, what’s to stop them from violating more students’ rights?

Students have rights that cannot be ignored.

If the Innocence Project loses this battle and Protess has to forfeit students’ grades and personal e-mails, it will set a negative precedent for similar cases.