Legal
Privacy policy.
What Meridian collects, why, who handles it for us, and what you can ask of us. It covers this website, Passage, our coaching platform, and Atlas, our tournament software.
Effective 9 October 2026
Who is responsible
Meridian, of Seattle, Washington, United States, is responsible for the personal data described here.
Write to justus@meridiandebate.com with any privacy question or request, or use our inquiry form.
What we collect
- When you write to us: the name, email address, organisation, role and message you enter in the inquiry form, the coach waitlist or the newsletter sign-up.
- When you use Passage: your account details (name, email address and role), your intake answers, and your coaching record of sessions, bookings, messages and notes. A student's account also names the guardians linked to it.
- When you pay: Stripe takes your card details. We receive a record of the payment, never the full card number.
- When you take part in a tournament on Atlas: your name, school or team, entries, pairings, ballots and results.
- When you visit: your IP address, browser and device type, the pages you view and the page that sent you. Our host and security tools process these to deliver and protect the site, and our analytics count them in aggregate.
Why we use it
- To answer an inquiry and consider working with you.
- To run Passage and Atlas, schedule sessions and take payment.
- To send the newsletter you signed up for. Every issue has a link to unsubscribe.
- To measure how the site is used, with statistics cookies you accept.
- To keep the site secure and working, for example by limiting repeated requests.
- To keep accounting and tax records.
We do not sell personal information or share it for targeted advertising, and we make no decision about you by automated means alone.
Children and students
Passage and Atlas serve students, many of them under 18. A student under 16 uses Passage only with a parent's or guardian's consent, and a linked guardian can see the student's coaching record and billing: purchases, refunds and credit adjustments.
We collect from students only what coaching and competition need. If you believe we hold a child's information without that consent, write to us and we will delete it.
Tournaments on Atlas
An organisation that hosts a tournament on Atlas decides what the tournament collects and publishes. Pairings, results and ballots can be public on the tournament's page. For that data the host is responsible, and we process it on the host's behalf.
Who handles it for us
These providers process personal data on our instructions, under data processing agreements.
- Vercel: hosting, Web Analytics and Speed Insights.
- Supabase: our database and sign-in.
- Stripe: payments.
- Google: the email we send, through Google Workspace, and Google Analytics.
- Usercentrics: Cookiebot, our cookie consent.
- Upstash: limiting repeated requests.
Otherwise we disclose personal data only when the law requires it.
Where your data is kept
Meridian is based in the United States, and our providers keep data there. If you use the site from another country, your data is processed in the United States, where the law on personal data may differ from yours.
How long we keep it
- Inquiries and waitlist entries: while the conversation or engagement lasts, then we delete them.
- Newsletter: until you unsubscribe.
- Passage accounts: while the account is open. When it closes we delete or anonymise the record, except what the law requires us to keep.
- Payment and accounting records: as long as tax law requires, up to seven years.
- Technical logs: only as long as our host and security tools need them, then deleted automatically.
Your rights
Wherever you live, you can ask to see the data we hold about you, and to correct or delete it. Write to justus@meridiandebate.com. We answer within 30 days, and using these rights never changes how we treat you.
The law where you live may give you more. Those rights are below.
Where you live
Your region opens first, from where your connection comes from. Every region is here for anyone to read.
The United StatesYour region
- Children under 13: we do not knowingly collect a child's personal information without verifiable consent from a parent. A parent can review the child's information, have it deleted and refuse further collection by writing to justus@meridiandebate.com.
- If your state has a consumer privacy law, such as California, Colorado, Connecticut, Virginia or Texas, you can ask to know, correct and delete your personal information, and to opt out of its sale or its use for targeted advertising. We do neither.
- If we turn a request down, you can appeal by replying to our answer, and we will explain the outcome of the appeal.
The EU, the EEA, the UK and Switzerland
The GDPR, or the UK GDPR, applies to how we handle your data, because we offer our services to you.
- Our legal bases: steps you asked for before a contract, and the contract itself, for inquiries, Passage, Atlas and payments (Article 6(1)(b)); your consent for the newsletter and statistics cookies (Article 6(1)(a)); our legitimate interest in a site that stays up and safe (Article 6(1)(f)); and our legal obligations for accounting records (Article 6(1)(c)).
- Your rights: access, correction, deletion, restriction, portability and objection, and to withdraw consent at any time without affecting what we did before. We answer within one month.
- You can complain to the data protection authority where you live or work.
- Your data is processed in the United States. Where a provider moves it further, it relies on the EU-US Data Privacy Framework or the European Commission's Standard Contractual Clauses.
Everywhere else
You have the rights the law where you live gives you, and at least those under Your rights above.
Security
Data travels encrypted, and our database limits access to it by role. If a breach puts your data at risk, we will tell you and the authorities as the law requires.
Changes
We post any change on this page and update the effective date at the top. If a change affects what we collect or why, we also tell account holders by email before it applies.
Privacy questions and requests go to justus@meridiandebate.com, or through our inquiry form.
Send an inquiry