The College Fix

Last month The College Fix reported on the arrest of students at an Ohio University senate meeting for speaking out against the senate president’s anti-Israel “Blood Bucket Challenge.”

Now those four students are headed for trial in February in Athens County Municipal Court after each rejecting “a deal of a $100 fine and a minor misdemeanor charge of disorderly conduct,” The Post reports:

“The reason we made that offer was because … there have been similar cases at OU where people have been arrested at Board of Trustees and at Student Senate meetings, and that’s the state’s standard offer on these types of cases,”  said City Prosecutor Tracy Meek, adding that the offer was open to each defendant, not the group as a whole.

“That’s the state’s only interest in this case, is a conviction of a minor misdemeanor of disorderly conduct,” Meek said.

There’s a new twist in the case: The school, questionably, is citing student-privacy law to withhold documents demanded by the lawyer for a defendant:

[University representative Jim] Miller maintained that some of the documents requested by [lawyer Larry] Zuckerman were protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act and could not be disclosed, though Zuckerman argued that because he was “not asking about financial aid information or the students’ grades” that documents requested should be available.

“Any document maintained by the university that directly references a student’s name is protected by FERPA,” Miller said.

Zuckerman had subpoenaed [senate president and “blood bucket” instigator Megan] Marzec for her correspondence between herself, OU officials, herself and OUPD, which she sent prior to the pretrial. Marzec also was in the audience during the hearing. Along with Marzec’s statements, Zuckerman wanted correspondence from OUPD and OU officials.

FERPA aims to protect students’ educational records, but police records are generally understood to be open to state open records laws. It was not immediately clear if the correspondences Zuckerman is seeking are FERPA-protected.

Read the Post story.

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IMAGE: The Post screenshot