Rachel Silberstein is reporting for the Times Union Republican gubernatorial candidate Marc Molinaro July 16, accused Gov. Andrew Cuomo's re-election team of potentially violating federal privacy laws by recruiting SUNY students who benefited from the Excelsior Scholarship program to participate in a political ad promoting its benefits. Molinaro said Cuomo's campaign may have violated the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA. "Federal law precludes the sharing of specific private information about students. And the governor's campaign violated that ... for political benefit," Molinaro said during a press conference held on the steps of the state Capitol. "Students who benefit from a scholarship are not playthings in a political campaign; they're just not." A Cuomo campaign spokesperson said the office obtained the student names from a publicly available list of approximately 20 invitees to the governor's State of the State in January. Those students were invited to the event by school administrators, who would have had access to student information. Cuomo's office noted that FERPA regulations bind universities, not state government. The Excelsior Scholarship enables full-time SUNY and CUNY students with household incomes under $100,000 to receive free tuition. Read the full story in the Times Union.