Bennett Hall has an excellent story in the Corvallis Gazette Times:
Oregon State University student media adviser Kate Willson thought she was just doing her job when she filed a public records request with the university. Now she’s worried it could get her fired.
OSU’s chief spokesman says Willson’s job is safe and the university was not trying to muzzle her. But he also says Willson was out of line when she tried to obtain public records from the institution she works for and that all such requests should be filed by student journalists, not their adviser. …
Willson assumes that OSU will honor the remainder of her contract, but she doesn’t expect to be offered another when the current agreement expires. Her experience has left her feeling frustrated and confused.
“They’re making such a big thing, and it’s not,” Willson said. “It’s a public record — who cares if I get it?”
The Oregon Public Records Law was passed by the Legislature in 1973 in a spirit of transparency and open government, Willson added.
But various agencies and institutions have chipped away at those foundations with one exception after another, steadily eroding the public’s ability to access government information. Wilson feels an obligation to do something about that.
“Every time they deny and we don’t push back, we make it worse,” Willson said.
Here’s the part that would never happen at UO: She actually got a meeting with her university’s general counsel. Here at UO, GC Randy Geller would have just sent her a threatening email. Of course OSU GC Meg Reeves is a little confused about the law:
Steven Wilker, a media law attorney with the Portland law firm of Tonkon Torp, said he’s baffled by Oregon State’s position. …
He’s also puzzled by Reeves’ assertion that, by virtue of her position as the university’s general counsel, she automatically has an attorney-client relationship with Willson, a university employee.
“Her client is the university; her client is not that teacher,” Wilker said.
But even if Willson were, in fact, Reeves’ client, that would not give Reeves the power to order Willson not to repeat what they said or wrote to each other. That’s “Lawyer 101,” Wilker said.
“The nature of attorney-client privilege is it’s a privilege of the client,” he said, “and the client is free to waive that privilege.”
But even if Willson were, in fact, Reeves’ client, that would not give Reeves the power to order Willson not to repeat what they said or wrote to each other. That’s “Lawyer 101,” Wilker said.
“The nature of attorney-client privilege is it’s a privilege of the client,” he said, “and the client is free to waive that privilege.”
My experiences with the OSU public records office have been generally positive – much quicker and cheaper than at UO. On the other hand the data Willson is seeking on faculty salaries is easily available for UO, thanks to our Institutional Research office. See ir.uoregon.edu. Only in pdf form however – if you ask UO’ Public Records Office for a machine readable file, they’ll hit you up for $280 dollars in inexplicable fees, and you’ll wait for a month or two.
Under VPFA Mark McCambridge OSU was a leader in financial transparency. His efforts to put all financial transactions on the web are explained in this InsideHigherEd story, and were an inspiration to UO’s Nathan Tublitz, who after a long fight with Frances Dyke got the very watered down “Financial Transparency Tool” added to Duckweb (under employee information). It seems like OSU’s new VPFA Glenn Ford is backsliding on transparency.
The attorney’s conclusions that an OSU employee does not meet the definition of a “person” under the public records act law, and further that the bizarrely-alleged attorney-client relationship somehow compels the CLIENT to maintain confidentiality, are both so specious, so ludicrous and so contrary to both the letter and spirit of the law that they constitute either gross incompetence, or a significant ethical breach. In either case, this attorney’s behavior should be the subject of a serious and meaningful investigation by the Oregon State Bar. Standing for such a complaint could extend to virtually any taxpayer in the state whose taxes are used to pay this public employee, or any student at the school whose tuition is also presumably used in part for this “lawyer’s” service, to say nothing of the school’s administration. If this is the caliber of representation they are receiving, they have perhaps the greatest interest in a full and fair investigation in this utter tripe having been offered up as part of an ostensibly reliable, informed and professional service by a trained attorney.
To make sense of OSU’s position (and to educate OSU’s attorneys), ignore the Oregon Public Records law and its allowance that “any person” may request a non-exempt document. That law is irrelevant to this dispute. What matters is the employment contract this instructor has with her OSU employer. OSU is telling her how and what she can teach. She may instruct students on how to file Public Records requests, but may not do so herself as a paid employee. She may use her paid employment time to gather teaching materials, but not if doing so requires that she file a Public Records request for an OSU document. On the other hand, if she sought the same data from the UO as teaching materials for her students to analyze, I suspect that would be okay by OSU.
When looked at this way, this dispute is a classic First Amendment issue that asks to what extent can a public university regulate the content of its teachers’ teaching speech. The Supreme Court has said that a public employee’s on-the-job speech is not protected by the First Amendment because the Constitution protects only speech by private citizens, not public employees. Whether that principle allows an exception for University teachers has yet to be addressed head-on by the Court. I’m not optimistic in this Court.
Faculty unions, like UO’s, have sought to protect by contractual their members’ on-the-job speech from employer regulation. Too soon to tell whether that tactic will work. UO Matters might provide the seminal case.
This post seemed very confusing to me…as if there had to me more to the story. I read the entire Corvallis GT article and I remain confused.
Why would OSU have such a bizarre reaction to provide information that even the UO releases readily?
I hate it when lawyers target their own employees for retribution, as seems to be the case here with Ms. Wilson.
One commentator commentates thusly: “As many people have passed through various positions of management, it is hard to pin the faults on any one person. But, there is considerable institutional apathy connected with a much more sinister lack of accountability, especially when leaders are challenged on even the most fundamental levels of fairness and equity or when being asked for more transparency.”
Read the whole thing here
Kate Willson and Steve Clark will be guests on OPB’s Think Out Loud tomorrow, January 9, at noon. I assume they will be discussing this conflict – although it may be part of a Book Club review. (I’m guessing the former.)
Thanks for the heads up. Ms. Willson pretty much won the argument. OSU has got to be worried about something. I wonder, in terms of student employees, would graduate students fall in that area that OSU does not want to release?