From the issue dated February 27, 2004
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Judge Orders University to Turn Over Crime RecordsGeorgia ruling is latest in battle over documents at private colleges
The Mercer University Police Department's Web site encourages students and staff members to report "anything suspicious" to a campus hot line. But how much information can they obtain about crimes at the university? Not enough, says Amanda A. Farahany, an Atlanta lawyer representing a former Mercer student who claims she was raped on the Macon, Ga., campus in 2000. While preparing her case against the university last year, Ms. Farahany asked Mercer for campus police documents going back to 1995, including incident reports, radio dispatch logs, contact-person reports, and information about particular sexual assaults. A federal law known as the Clery Act requires colleges to maintain a public crime log, listing the nature, time, date, location, and disposition of each incident. But the law does not compel institutions to make available more-detailed information about campus crimes and police investigations. After Mercer refused to turn over its records, Ms. Farahany filed a separate complaint against the university in November that sought the release of the documents under Georgia's open-records law. Mercer countered that the open-records law did not apply to private institutions and that its police force was not a public agency. But last month a Georgia state-court judge ruled that Mercer must turn over the records because the university serves "public functions" by employing sworn police officers who carry guns and have the power to make arrests just like municipal police officers. The ruling, apparently the first of its kind, is the latest development in a continuing debate over the proper balance between competing institutional concerns -- students' right to privacy and their right to information about their surroundings. Advocates for greater access to campus crime information hope the decision strengthens the case of student journalists who are suing Harvard University to obtain its police records. S. Daniel Carter, senior vice president of Security on Campus, a nonprofit watchdog group that monitors crime at colleges, says the Mercer ruling affirms that private colleges "should not be given a pass" on disclosing crime information. Exempting private colleges from open-records laws, Mr. Carter says, gives them "incentive to operate their police departments as a black hole, where crime can be dealt with privately, without the public being able to be aware of extent of crime on the campus." Maintaining 'Transparency' In a legal brief filed last December, Mercer had contended that as a private corporation it was not a public office or agency that was subject to the Georgia Open Records Act. Furthermore, Mercer's lawyers argued that the university's police officers derive their power from the university, not the state: "The requirement that Mercer policemen be certified in accordance with [state standards] before exercising such powers does not make these officers agents of the state." Superior Court Judge L.A. McConnell Jr. rejected those arguments. In his ruling, filed this month in the Superior Court of Bibb County, Judge McConnell wrote that in determining whether records held by a private entity were subject to open-records law, the "focus ... is not on the actor but on the particular, discrete function performed by that actor." He concluded that Mercer police officers performed public duties by enforcing state laws, maintaining public order, and preventing and investigating crimes. 'Public's Interest' Although Mercer had described documents pertaining to sexual assaults as "sensitive and private" in its brief, Judge McConnell ruled that "the public's interest in safety and in the transparency of public affairs outweighs Mercer's interest in protecting the privacy of the university and its students." The judge did concede in his ruling that it was necessary to delete names and addresses of victims of sexual assaults from the documents. A spokeswoman for Mercer said university officials would not comment on the case. Mercer's lawyers have filed an appeal in the Georgia Court of Appeals. Weighing Privacy As in the Mercer case, Harvard officials cite privacy concerns in explaining their refusal to release detailed police records. Last summer The Harvard Crimson, the student newspaper, filed a lawsuit against the university to get access to complete crime records after Harvard refused to turn over documents the newspaper had requested. The Crimson contends that the limited information in police logs had prevented reporters from fully investigating and reporting on incidents of public interest, including alleged embezzlement by two students. Yet Harvard officials have said that releasing the detailed crime records could reveal personal information about students that would violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, which protects student privacy. Harvard also argues that its police department is exempt from the public-records laws because the university is a private institution. A hearing in the case was scheduled for this week. Mr. Carter, of Security on Campus, says college police forces should have to provide the same information that municipal police departments make available, because otherwise there are "different types of police protection in the same community, where one [department] has public oversight and the other does not." The rulings in each of the pending cases will ultimately depend on the interpretations of open-records laws, which vary from state to state. But the debates themselves could prompt legislative changes. In 1993, for instance, the student newspaper at the University of Richmond sued the institution for access to police records. Although the university prevailed in court, the Virginia legislature later revised the law to require private colleges to make the records available to the public. Differing Opinions In two more recent cases, state agencies reached opposite conclusions in disputes between private colleges and individuals seeking access to campus police records. In an advisory opinion last December, New York's Committee on Open Government found in favor of The Ithaca Journal, a daily newspaper in New York that had been seeking access to campus police reports at Cornell University. The university argued that as a private institution it was exempt from the state's freedom-of-information law. Although the committee's opinion did not compel the university to act, the Journal's managing editor says Cornell has since given the newspaper access to the documents. But in Indiana, Justin McLaughlin had no such luck. Mr. McLaughlin, a former student journalist at Taylor University at Upland, first requested campus police records while researching a series of burglaries at the campus last year. When the university's office of campus safety declined to provide information on investigations of the incidents, he wrote to a state official charged with interpreting Indiana's open-records laws, seeking advice. He received a 2,000-word response stating that he had no case. Mr. McLaughlin, who graduated in January 2003, says he does not have the money to file a lawsuit against Taylor, but he plans to seek any relevant records from the Grant County Sheriff's Office, which works with the university's police department. "I know they can't ignore me," he says. http://chronicle.com Section: Students Volume 50, Issue 25, Page A1 | |||||||||||||||
Copyright © 2004 by The Chronicle of Higher Education