On Oct. 6, that committee sent letters to both Ms. Spangenberg and Julie Brock, the other student with a conditional diploma, demanding that they turn over all emails from March 22 to March 31 “relating to” or “to/from any individuals at Starr King.”

The letter also asks each woman to “provide access to your laptop that was in use” during that period. It refers to the board’s May 19 letter stating its desire “to assess whether, and if so, to what extent” the two women “bear responsibility for the breach.” In other words, the board harbored suspicion that the women were not saying all that they knew.

Ms. Spangenberg and Ms. Brock said that turning over their emails, even if they blacked out certain names, could betray confidences from their works as chaplaincy or ministerial interns. Besides, they said, they did not send either email, and in fact had not read the attachment from Strapped Student. Anonymity is not their style, they said — both pride themselves on their outspokenness.

“I was student body president last year, and Suzi was elected to the board of trustees,” said Ms. Brock, who was interviewed from their lawyer’s office. “The student body voted for me to take the issues of mistrust to the president, and say we wanted a student ombudsman.”

One trustee has resigned in support of the students, as has Ms. Ritchie, who was passed over for the presidency. She said the students were persecuted for airing their views.

“They’ve both very vocal, and I believe responsible, critics of the Starr King administration,” Ms. Ritchie said. “They were the only people inside the school itself who admitted having seen the documents” — the first email — “at a point when it was in very wide distribution.” They are paying a price for “being forthright when nobody else in the community was.”

Helio Fred Garcia, the chairman of the Starr King board, said that after being warned that the documents were confidential, Ms. Spangenberg and Ms. Brock “continued to circulate the documents and discuss the documents at a meeting they had called.” What’s more, he said, the two students intended “to distribute them further.”