Contribution of private WhatsApp messages with a request for intervention from a university commission for alleged sexual harassment.

The complainant, a university professor, sued the university for considering that his study coordinator had violated his duty of confidentiality when he revealed the content of some WhatsApp messages in the face of alleged sexual harassment by this teacher to a student to whom he had sent these messages. The complaint is filed to consider that: 1) the communication of personal data arising from the meetings held by the coordinator of studies with the Dean and the Head of Department, was covered by the legal basis provided in art. 6.1.c) of the RGPD (the coordinator was obliged ex lege to attend and advise the student, and to communicate the facts to the Dean of the Faculty and the head of the Department), and also by the legal basis provided in art. 6.1.e) RGPD (the coordinator communicated personal data in the exercise of the functions of direction and control of a teaching that he coordinated); and 2) the contribution and subsequent access to the messages by the members of the university commission was covered by the same legal bases, because the communication was covered by a protocol of action approved by the university (art. 6.1.c RGPD) , and because the coordinator acted in the exercise of the functions of prevention of sexual harassment in its field of action (art. 6.1.e RGPD).