Last updated August 18, 2026
Gist is a study-notes service run by Vernon Clay, a student at Morehouse College. This page explains exactly what Gist collects, why, and what it never does. It is written to be read, not to be skimmed past.
The short version. Gist stores your name, your email, and which classes you joined. It never sees your card. It does not sell anything about you, run ads, or track you around the internet. Email me and I will delete your account.
Gist is operated by Vernon Clay as an independent project. It is not operated by, endorsed by, or affiliated with Morehouse College. Questions about this policy go to vernon.clay@gistsheets.com.
Gist uses Google Sign-In. Google tells Gist your name, email address, and profile picture. That is all Gist asks Google for. Gist never receives or stores your Google password.
If you use the request form, Gist stores what you typed: the class name, professor, school, course code, and your email address. This is used to decide which classes to add and to tell you if yours is added.
Sheets are built from audio recordings of lectures and photographs of the board. Contributors can also attach optional extras: a handout, a syllabus page, a photo of a textbook diagram, or the professor's posted objectives. These are supplied by Gist or by contributors with permission to record. They may incidentally contain the voices of the professor and of students who speak in class.
Recordings are used for one purpose: producing the one-page summary for that lecture. A sheet can include a cleaned-up drawing based on what was on the board. Recordings themselves are not published, sold, or shared with other students. If you are recorded in a class and want the recording deleted, email me and I will delete it.
Gist never sees or stores your card. When paid plans are live, payments are handled entirely by Stripe on Stripe's own pages. Gist receives only whether a subscription is active, when it renews, and the email attached to it.
Gist is a small operation and uses a few standard services. Each one sees only what it needs.
Gist does not sell your personal information and does not share it for advertising. Gist will disclose information if required by law.
To fix a problem on your account or check that something works, Vernon can open the site as your account. Every use of this is logged with who did it and when, and nothing about it is hidden: it exists so a broken enrollment or upload can be repaired without asking you to do the clicking.
Gist sets one cookie: a signed session cookie that keeps you logged in. There are no advertising cookies, no analytics cookies, and no third-party trackers on the site.
Email vernon.clay@gistsheets.com and you can:
You can cancel a class yourself at any time from your account page. You can also revoke Gist's access to your Google account from your Google account settings.
Gist is built for college students. If you are under 18, please get a parent or guardian's permission before signing up. Gist does not knowingly collect information from children under 13.
Access to sheets is checked on the server on every single request, secrets are kept out of the site's code, and payments never touch Gist's own servers. No small service can promise perfect security, and this one will not pretend otherwise. If something goes wrong that affects you, I will tell you.
If this policy changes in a way that matters, the date at the top changes and anyone with an account gets an email. Small wording fixes will not.