The College Fix

UPDATED

Harassed student publication by demanding legal fees

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act has been invoked often by universities that want to hide information from the public and see “student privacy” as an excellent fig leaf, but some courts and state agencies have rebuked schools that misused FERPA.

Last week a Florida appellate court told the University of Central Florida it can’t shield the identities of student leaders when it releases records on “requests for and distribution of” student government funds, which ultimately come from taxpayers.

The Student Press Law Center reports the 5th District Court of Appeal agreed with a trial court that ruled in favor of student publication Knight News, whose FERPA-related disputes with the administration go back four years:

In 2016, Knight News requested school financial documents that showed requests for and distribution of funds. Initially, the school failed to release them. When the documents were handed over, names of students, who allocate student fees as part of their role in student government, were redacted.

“We saw that as a conflict to open government, so we took them to court,” [News Editor Joe] Klawe-Genao said. “These students have an obligation, like real life government officials, to face scrutiny, to face a closer inspection and for these public records to be open to anybody to inspect for themselves.”

MORE: Court rebukes university that cited FERPA to hide witnesses

The university was so confident that FERPA lets it hide anything tangential to a student – even things that would never be in the student’s “education records” – that it told the trial judge it wouldn’t release the identity of a hypothetical student government president who got a $25,000 reimbursement for travel expenses, and whose father was the university president.

Knight News previously claimed the student government held a budget meeting between terms so regular students couldn’t participate, and that it blocked public comment during a meeting last year when a budget of nearly $19 million was approved.

UCF has continually harassed Knight News when it sought public records in court, demanding the student-run online outlet pay for the 64,000-student public university’s legal fees, but courts have consistently rejected the requests, according to SPLC. In last summer’s trial ruling, the judge ordered the university to pay the publication’s fees.

Several national and Florida press groups submitted a friend-of-the-court brief in February siding with Knight News, saying “students’ identities are routinely released to the public in documents created by student government associations, including ballots, roll-call vote tallies and minutes of meetings, and that expense reports should be treated no differently.”

They called FERPA “a much-abused statute often manipulated by government agencies to conceal unflattering information.”

The university’s years of expensive and avoidable litigation with a student publication haven’t dampened its overseers’ enthusiasm for its longtime president.

Knight News reports that two days after the appeals court rebuked the university, the Florida Board of Governors extended President John Hitt’s contract for another year, crediting him with the school’s large numbers of first-generation and minority students.

https://twitter.com/FrankLoMonte/status/879339983341060097

The publication’s lawyer was at the meeting, and told the governors in part:

UCF has fought for more than five years keeping the actions of its student government a secret, and Knight News and I have fought the entire time to find out what it is hiding. UCF has continually invoked the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act to justify redactions in student government budget documents, the closure of government hearings, and a particular hearing in which a US marine and veteran was kicked off the ballot for student government president for creating a website on the wrong day.

That refers to a closed hearing a year ago in which a conservative Marine and College Republicans president were kicked off the ballot, prompted by a complaint filed by a College Democrats official.

Read the report.

UPDATE: The Florida Board of Governors extended the contract for UCF President John Hitt two days after the adverse court ruling. The article has been amended accordingly.

MORE: University won’t say how it punished banana-throwers because FERPA

MORE: Conservative Marine, CRs prez booted from student government election

Like The College Fix on Facebook / Follow us on Twitter

MORE: Natan86/Shutterstock