Orange hush: OSU student media adviser says university tried to quash her quest for public records

2013-12-29T09:30:00Z 2014-03-03T16:09:07Z Orange hush: OSU student media adviser says university tried to quash her quest for public recordsBy Bennett Hall, Corvallis Gazette-Times 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, 33, is an accomplished journalist with a background in computer-assisted reporting and a resume that includes stints with the McMinnville News-Register, the Albuquerque Journal and the International Consortium of Investigative Journalists.

She came to work at OSU in the fall of 2012 as the editorial content coordinator for student media, a position that involves mentoring staffers at the university’s student newspaper, The Daily Barometer, as well as the campus TV and radio stations.

This fall, Willson made plans to teach a workshop on computer-assisted reporting. To make the lesson as meaningful as possible for the students, she decided to use real world data: five years’ worth of campus crime statistics and employee compensation information, including data on student pay.

In early October, following OSU’s policy on acceptable use of university information, she started by approaching the custodian of the crime statistics. But she was told she needed to file a formal public records request with Beth Giddens, a paralegal in OSU’s Office of General Counsel.

Filing public records requests is something Willson knows how to do. Before leaving journalism for academia, she had filed numerous requests for documents from all kinds of government agencies for use in her reporting.

On Oct. 18, Willson filed two formal requests with Giddens, one seeking the crime data and another seeking information about the university’s compensation database. As she had done with similar requests in the past dealing with complicated databases, Willson asked for field names and other documentation that would help her understand the employee pay records she planned to request later.

“I am an educator at Oregon State University and I will use this information to craft a records request for compensation data, with which I will train student journalists in the logistics and ethics of using structured data in their reporting,” she explained in her request.

“Those students work for educational news media organizations and many will go on to professional newsrooms.”

OSU applies the brakes

Both requests met with resistance from the university.

Initially, Giddens estimated it would cost more than $10,000 to provide the crime data because of the need to remove identifying information about students protected under FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. After Willson amended her request, Giddens said the crime data could be provided at a cost of $24.53.

The other request proved far more problematic.

In a written response to Willson, Giddens said she would not provide details about the structure of the compensation database because that information was exempt from disclosure under a section of the Oregon Public Records Law intended to protect computer programs.

Willson persisted, explaining that she needed the information in order to formulate a focused record request and ensure that her students would have a clear understanding of the data they were working with.

After amending her request several times and meeting with more denials, Willson emailed Giddens again on Oct. 31, once more explaining that she needed technical information about the database in order to formulate a focused request for compensation records.

She offered to sit down and discuss what she needed with a programmer familiar with the database, as she had done with similar requests to other public agencies, to make it as easy as possible to provide the information she was looking for.

She also pointed out that Oregon law allows members of the public to appeal denials of public records requests to the county district attorney’s office.

That’s when Giddens’ boss, OSU general counsel Meg Reeves, entered the fray, asking to meet with Willson and her supervisor, OSU student media director Julia Sandidge.

Summit meeting

The meeting took place on Nov. 5 in Reeves’ office on the sixth floor of the Kerr Administration Building.

By Willson’s account, it was an uncomfortable situation. Rather than explaining why her office had denied Willson’s records request, Reeves — the university’s top attorney — told her she had no legal right to request the records in the first place.

In Oregon, any person has the right to inspect any public record unless it is expressly exempted from disclosure by law. But according to Willson, Reeves argued that since OSU is not considered a person under the law, its employees do not qualify as persons for purposes of making public records requests.

(In an email exchange with Willson folowing the meeting, Reeves explained it this way: “Kate Willson, private person, may inspect public records in response to a request. Kate Willson, OSU employee, may not.”)

The meeting took another unexpected turn, Willson said, when Reeves stopped in mid-sentence to announce that Willson was her client and that they had a legally privileged attorney-client relationship.

As Willson understood it, the statement was meant to convey that she was not to discuss anything that was said in the meeting because it was privileged information. That impression was reinforced by email messages Willson received from Reeves, which carried a stern warning in boldface italic capital letters: “This is an attorney-client communication. Please do not redistribute this email — or disclose its contents — without authorization from the OSU Office of the General Counsel.”

“What it felt like,” Willson told the Gazette-Times, “was an attempt to intimidate.”

Collision course

The meeting also seems to have set Willson on a collision course with her boss.

On Nov. 6, Willson got a lengthy email from Sandidge stressing that “OSU Student Media hired you to perform as an educator, not as a journalist.”

While she was free to pursue journalistic projects on her own time, Sandidge wrote, she should not file any requests for OSU records in her capacity as an adviser. Any such requests from student journalists should be filed completely on their own, and not jointly with Willson.

She also attached a copy of the College Media Association code of ethics “which states that a faculty who assumes advisory roles with student media must remain aware of their obligation to teach without directing or producing.”

Willson took none of this lying down.

She fired off emails to Reeves and Willson, asking for clarification and defending her actions.

She also filed an amended public records request, this time as a freelance reporter. Megan Campbell, the managing editor of The Daily Barometer, and the Gazette-Times also signed onto that request, which the newspaper is still pursuing.

On Dec. 4, Willson was called into another meeting, this time with Sandidge and Jeri Hemmer, OSU’s associate director of human resources.

Willson says she wasn’t allowed to record the meeting or even take written notes. Both women, Willson says, repeatedly pressed her to admit that she had violated OSU policy and her employment contract by filing the public records requests, something she refused to do.

And while she says she wasn’t explicitly threatened with termination, she has no doubt she was being warned to back off or she would lose her job.

“There’s no question,” Willson said.

‘It’s not appropriate’

Neither Reeves, Sandidge nor Hemmer would agree to be interviewed by the Gazette-Times for this story or answer questions sent via email. Campbell and Warner Strausbaugh, the editor of The Daily Barometer, also declined to be interviewed.

But Steve Clark, OSU’s vice president for university relations and marketing, talked at length with a reporter about the situation.

He said Willson has no reason to be worried about losing her job, but he also defended the university’s handling of the matter. He insisted that OSU is not trying to conceal information the public has a right to see — it’s simply following the law.

“It’s not appropriate, according to the law, for an employee (of a public institution) to request public records from their place of work,” Clark said.

“Learning to use data as a student journalist is a fine goal or outcome, but state law does not allow Kate as an employee of the university to request public records with a student.”

He added that the university has provided records over the years to reporters for the Daily Barometer and other student media outlets. He also said Willson was free to request public records held by OSU as a private citizen and that she could then use the data to teach a workshop — she just couldn’t ask for the records as a university employee.

“The point is quite simply who made the request and how did they make the request,” Clark said.

He added that Sandidge was within her rights as a manager to tell Willson not to help students file records requests.

And he insisted that Reeves was acting properly as the university’s chief legal counsel when she directed Willson not to discuss their conversations by invoking the principle of attorney-client privilege.

“When you meet with an attorney, it’s a confidential matter between you and your attorney. Those meetings are confidential,” Clark said.

“It wasn’t Kate’s job or her authority to decide what information provided by the university attorney should be released,” he added. “I’m not saying she’s a bad person, I’m just saying that’s not in her job description.”

Dissenting opinion

Steven Wilker, a media law attorney with the Portland law firm of Tonkon Torp, said he’s baffled by Oregon State’s position.

To say that public employees don’t have the legal right to file a public records request with the public agency they work for is an “exceptionally narrow” reading of the Oregon Public Records Law, Wilker believes.

“That’s an argument only a lawyer could love,” he said. “I don’t think it comports with the purpose of the rule, I don’t think it comports with the spirit of the rule, I don’t think it comports with the language of the rule.”

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.”

Tough balancing act

Rachele Kanigel, an associate professor of journalism at San Francisco State University, is the president of the College Media Association.

While the organization has declined to take a position on Willson’s situation, Kanigel said the CMA’s code of ethics was intended as a set of guiding principles for advisers and institutions, not as a blueprint for disciplinary action. Student media advisers, she said, are often obliged to perform a near-impossible balancing act.

“It’s important that we not do the job of student reporters or editors,” Kanigel said.

“However, I think it’s equally important that we be good role models and show students how to do good, aggressive journalism.”

Tim Gleason, the former dean of the University of Oregon School of Journalism and Communications, remembers Willson from an internship and calls her “a great journalist.”

But he also said she’s in a very difficult professional gray area. On the one hand, her job is to train college students to be hard-nosed investigators. On the other hand, the institution they’re investigating is her employer.

“Whenever you get a student newspaper trying to be a truly independent student voice when it is in fact affiliated with a university, the adviser ends up in a very tricky situation,” Gleason said.

“If student journalists are going to do their job, they are going to be filing public records requests. How can (Willson) function as an adviser to a student publication if she can’t be involved at some level in public records requests?”

It’s an all-too-common situation, accoridng to Frank LoMonte, the executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va.

“About four or five times a year, we get a call from an adviser who has been fired or is about to be fired because his students are getting uncomfortably close to a story someone doesn’t want to see published,” he said.

“It’s a real white-knuckle position.”

Duty to push back

Like most members of the professional faculty at Oregon State, Willson is on a one-year employment contract with the university.

Her original deal, which expired this summer, was renewed to run through June 30, 2014, at a salary of $48,000 a year.

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.

“Being right isn’t everything, but I feel like if you’re teaching students how to do journalism, you can’t exactly be the kind who shrinks away. What kind of example would I be?”

Contact reporter Bennett Hall at bennett.hall@gazettetimes.com or 541-758-9529.

Reporter Bennett Hall can be contacted at 541-758-9529 or bennett.hall@gazettetimes.com.

Copyright 2014 Corvallis Gazette Times. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.

(40) Comments

  1. WinstonSmith
    Report Abuse
    WinstonSmith - January 25, 2014 2:07 pm
    Actually, VP Mark McCambridge was a well-known misogynist who treated women very badly at OSU. His idea of financial transparency was to talk the talk, but he did not walk the walk.
  2. WinstonSmith
    Report Abuse
    WinstonSmith - January 25, 2014 2:03 pm
    When I showed up on Ms Hemmer's radar, I decided to resign rather than deal with the bullying, character assassination and abuse. No job is worth that. I am fortunate in that I could retire, but I have seen OSU's out of control HR dept in action for years, and something should be done to put a halt to it's megalomaniac bullying behavior. The tone is set right at the top. Packerbacker is right GT, you should do an investigative piece on how employees are treated at OSU - you would have to allow the union reps and employees to speak anonymously, because they would definitely become HR targets if they speak out.
  3. Angry Student
    Report Abuse
    Angry Student - January 09, 2014 3:31 pm
    As a current OSU student in the NMC or DCA Major, we have wondered why three of our professors left the University after Spring 2013. Now we can accurately guess why.

    Also, I will be supplying my own resources to share this article with others, and lay them out in student common areas. Students are greatly unaware of the lack of support OSU provides students and staff members. If there were ever a time for student protests, I would say it is now.

    Gazette Times & Kate Wilson, please continue to pursue the public records until you have won. It is information that all should know, and if revealed may light a fire that OSU and other agencies will not be able to ignore.
  4. Fishwrapper
    Report Abuse
    Fishwrapper - January 08, 2014 10:53 pm
    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.)
  5. packerbacker
    Report Abuse
    packerbacker - January 08, 2014 3:02 pm
    Great story....and this only barely touches the horrific things going on at OSU between management & staff. Winston is correct, bullying of staff by management is a full blown problem. Jeri Hemmer & her staff in HR are there to side with management to assist in getting rid of "problem" employees. I spent most of the last year in pre-dismissal mode with Jeri & co. over many trumped up charges, was forced into many of these horrible meetings that often resulting in yelling matches between union rep & Jeri. The Equity & Inclusion Office also is no help. On mine & several others' cases they always fail to see that any bullying occurred & side with the managers & Jeri Hemmer. This whole bullying could bring you another big story, Bennett. The union is inundated dealing with so many staff being bullied out of their jobs. Good people are either being forced out or just fleeing, which is what I did after 28 yrs.
  6. nocapes
    Report Abuse
    nocapes - January 07, 2014 8:30 am
    OSU, where no good deed goes unpunished.
  7. History_PhD
    Report Abuse
    History_PhD - January 02, 2014 7:40 pm
    Time for Kate Willson to directly contact The Foundation for Individual Rights in Education (http://thefire.org/) about this blatant attempt by OSU to threaten her employment to gain her silence and prevent her from exercising her academic responsibilities to her students. This sounds like just the sort of case where they could deploy a few lawyers to make a difference....before her teaching contract is "mysteriously" not renewed.
  8. WinstonSmith
    Report Abuse
    WinstonSmith - January 01, 2014 1:18 am
    I worked for OSU for a number of years, and the information about salaries could be pulled from the database used by the administration in about ten minutes by a skilled departmental accountant. Any information that is inappropriate and should not be given out to the public is probably not available to that accountant anyway. UO has information about salaries available on their website. And OSU's information about salaries used to be available on a paper printout at the library's reserve book room. That is, of course, a very cumbersome format and not terribly useful. If the information comes to you in a PDF document, also a cumbersome format, you can use a full-featured version of Adobe Acrobat to convert the PDF to a Word document and from Word you can convert the data to a spreadsheet. Just find someone who is skilled at handling large amounts of data.
  9. Marvin McConoughey
    Report Abuse
    Marvin McConoughey - January 01, 2014 12:38 am
    Collaboration has a diverse history as a word and lends itself to a variety of interpretations, particularly in light of the role of collaborators in WWII. Coordination and cooperation would have been better, less loaded, words to use.
  10. Marvin McConoughey
    Report Abuse
    Marvin McConoughey - January 01, 2014 12:27 am
    Concur on the reluctance to provide public records. In fairness to the public agencies involved, some information requests do involve a great deal of work and one can imagine wrecking-bar attempts to waste public resources in filling frivolous requests. That does not appear to the the situation in this case.
  11. AJ Simonsen
    Report Abuse
    AJ Simonsen - December 31, 2013 6:04 pm
    Whew. I'm not the only one writing in on this. OSU has mismanaged it's media since I was there, and ever since. Not to mention the "intimidation" Winston mentions for when someone steps on someone's toes. I've got an opinion column pending. If it's not accepted, I'll post it. In the meantime, I offer A short history of News Media at OSU:

    http://aviewfromthebubble.com/2013/12/31/mismanagement-overreaction-nothing-new-at-osu/
  12. Harry Mallory
    Report Abuse
    Harry Mallory - December 31, 2013 12:49 pm
    Great story Bennett, now time for the follow-up. Request the same information and see what they're hiding.

    Good on Kate for sticking to her guns despite the intimidation.

    Now, lets see what they're hiding from the tax payers....
  13. Harry Mallory
    Report Abuse
    Harry Mallory - December 31, 2013 12:45 pm
    Karenykarl: <"Can anyone imagine the outrage and controversy if the administration were to put a lid on some sociology professor who was doing classwork using free and rational inquiry, and then suddenly found out that he/she couldn't teach a course because of arbitrary censorship?">>

    Or teach science contrary to established approved political narrative like global warming? Thats happened. Nick Drapela a ten year instructor at OSU lost his job that way.
  14. TruthIs
    Report Abuse
    TruthIs - December 31, 2013 8:02 am
    One thing I haven't seen in the comments so far is that this case appears to definitely be one of academic freedom.

    You obviously didn't read the comments and you don't seem to understand the nature of infighting faculty politics at a university. If you had read the comments, amongst others you would have found:

    1) If this is an issue of academic freedom, an implicature the story arguably invites, that is a matter it is the right of the Faculty Senate to raise with the Administration. Your story doesn't mention the Faculty Senate at all, and it is difficult to ascertain from your reporting exactly what principle is actually at issue here. Jim Day recently reported he now attends Faculty Senate meetings, so it shouldn't be too hard to get clarity on this question.

    Now, if Willson is claiming what you characterize as "prep-work" was a legitimate part of her role as an instructor/advisor, that could be a legitimate question of whether her academic freedom as an advisor with instructional oblgations has been infringed. And that is a serious matter the Facultly Senate is empowered to take up with the Administration on behalf of any Professional or Academic faculty member. The G-T dropped the ball here also because this question is easily posed to appropriate Faculty Senate representatives for definitive answers.

    If there is a question of whether this is a matter of academic freedom, the people you need to be criticizing are the OSU faculty and the Faculty Senate for not taking up the matter, not the administration. (Again, we don't know if they have, because the story is so incomplete.) It is their job to take up questions of administration infringement of the academic freedom of faculty, including professional faculty, and students.

    What the general public doesn't understand, and obviously the G-T failed to examine, is that the Administration is only as answerable to the Faculty Senate as the faculty chooses to hold it. Which as a rule is not much, for reasons that have little to do with the administration and everything to do with the nature of faculty at universities and what they chose to make a fight about. As Wallace Sayre, a Columbia University Political Science Professor famously remarked: "The politics of the university are so intense because the stakes are so low."

    At the bottom line, we don't know if this is a question of academic freedom from what is reported, and it may or may not be, because we don't know if the faculty has chosen to examine if it is.
  15. karenykarl
    Report Abuse
    karenykarl - December 31, 2013 5:06 am
    One thing I haven't seen in the comments so far is that this case appears to definitely be one of academic freedom. Kate Wilson is obviously doing her job, assisting students learning a thing or two about journalism how to do their job. Under the umbrella of the university -- any attempt by the administration to stifle this is censorship in its purest form. And the administrators should be answerable to the entire university governance situation -- i.e. the Faculty Senate.

    Can anyone imagine the outrage and controversy if the administration were to put a lid on some sociology professor who was doing classwork using free and rational inquiry, and then suddenly found out that he/she couldn't teach a course because of arbitrary censorship?
  16. TruthIs
    Report Abuse
    TruthIs - December 30, 2013 5:06 pm
    Your statement "Clarke's comments later in the article substantiate Willson's allegations" missed the point being made in my comment about "hearsay" and the key issues that Bennett's story leave unclear.

    First, the single quote in Bennett's story from an email by Reeves only addresses one claim by Willson about what she says was told: "Kate Willson, private person, may inspect public records in response to a request. Kate Willson, OSU employee, may not.”

    Moreover, Bennett's report does not say that Clark confirmed what Reeves or anybody else said to Willson. What Bennett in fact reports are Clark's statements in his official capacity as OSU spokesperson about OSU's position. (Regardless of whether that really is a sensible position for OSU to take is irrelevant.) That's an important distinction you just don't seem to grasp. The three things Clark actually confirms include:

    1) OSU apparently asserts as condition of employment, conditioned on its reading of certain ORSes and OARs, that employees may not make public records requests of OSU: “It’s not appropriate, according to the law, for an employee (of a public institution) to request public records from their place of work,” To be sure, if Bennett's reporting is accurate here, that seems really ill-advised by OSU for a host of reasons. But it doesn't go beyond what was quoted above from what Bennett reported to be an email from Reeves.

    2) OSU maintains that there is an issue of pedagogy here: “The point is quite simply who made the request and how did they make the request". Unfortunately, Bennett confuses the matter by adding his own summary of what he says was a comment by Clark that would be very important to clarifying the situation, rather than providing a direct quote: "He added that Sandidge was within her rights as a manager to tell Willson not to help students file records requests." Because we don't have the actual quote, we can't determine what "help students" means here. It would be quite different if this means OSU claims Sandidge could direct Willson to not provide instruction to students about how to draft and file PRRs themselves, even if students asked for that kind of help from their advisor, rather than that Sandidge could direct Willlson to not help students by doing their work and filing PRRs herself.

    3) Finally, Clark's statements do not directly address the primary matter at issue in my comment. Specifically, we still don't know the key details behind the garbled reporting about the seemingly strange assertion of "attorney-client" privilege. But Clark does says something specific in this regard that Bennett either failed to grasp, or just failed to fully explain to readers. It is key to sorting out this whole privilege claim and all the confusion and contention that the story represents stemmed from it:

    "It wasn’t Kate’s job or her authority to decide what information provided by the university attorney should be released,” he added. “I’m not saying she’s a bad person, I’m just saying that’s not in her job description.”

    In other words, Clark's position appears to be that Reeves represents OSU and released privileged information to Wilson as an agent (employee) of OSU. In the context of the rest of Bennett's report, this appears to confirm that Reeves is NOT representing Willson, but is representing OSU and is only representing Willson limited to her role as an agent of OSU. In that situation, Willson would not be able to waive the privilege between OSU and its council.

    Hopefully Bennett or other G-T reporters will followup to clarify the key questions left unanswered, or at least not clearly addressed, in this story.
  17. 92837432
    Report Abuse
    92837432 - December 30, 2013 3:32 pm
    no. Clark's comments later in the article substantiate Willson's allegations, so they are not "hearsay."

    Alice is exactly right.

    Perhaps if we had more of Clark's garbage, he could join some of the stalwarts here:

    http://www.weaselwords.com.au/Education.htm
  18. TruthIs
    Report Abuse
    TruthIs - December 30, 2013 12:33 pm
    Bennett, Jim, Mike and Theresa, this sounds like a very important story tip. Maybe one worth hiring on @Hammer as an intern at least to investigate further Especially in this time when:

    1) Oregon is undertaking massive health care reform, but a critical shortage of resources for mental health care is a major problem.

    2) OSU has a College of Pharmacy and College of Health and Human Sciences (without a med school) that are both trying to play in shaping health care policy.

    3) Prescription drug abuse has become a hot political topic, and the premise on which Oregon like many states has implemented the Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs with Federal DOJ money. Especially since Oregon is currently involved in half-hearted fight with US DEA to try to project individual privacy in Oregon. The ACLU intervened to try to protect individual interests, but there are bigger problems with Oregon's PDMP law:

    Oregon sues DEA over access to patient drug records

    By the way, it was the Democrats in Salem with Kulongoski who voted to take the DOJ money to set up the PDMP in the first place. And it is Democrats (inexplicably with the help of a few Republicans including Sen. Kruse from Roseburg and local Representative Thompson), have continued to use their majority power with Kitzhaber to expand the program under their ideas about health care reform in Oregon.

    Thanks for sharing @Hammer. Assuming your comment is accurate, it is unfortunate your experience as a student, and as a student interested in media, appears to have been less than you deserved. Although, sadly, it probably is not at all unique in Oregon or nationally.
  19. TruthIs
    Report Abuse
    TruthIs - December 30, 2013 12:06 pm
    Actually @TrueConservative, your spin is misleading, although clearly well-intentioned. The claim that students should be making all of the public records requests it is not at all a red herring. And this is neither a defense nor a criticism of OSU as an institution. The appropriate thing to be said about OSU, if Bennett's reporting as far as it goes is accurate, is that OSU handled this whole affair quite poorly and that is something that needs to be understood in larger context.

    On the other hand, this is a defense of education and a criticism of Oregon's dysfunctional public records laws, to wit:

    Oregon: Corruption Risk Report Card

    Although Oregon's overall ranking doesn't look too bad, it's only because all 50 states do badly in absolute terms so the variation is pretty much just noise.

    What's important here is that Oregon got a "F" on public transparency. And that is because the kind of self-serving liberals and conservatives who end up in Salem have been hellbent on undermining for our public records laws and government transparency generally for years, because neither side welcomes sunlight on their agendas or the affairs of those they truly represent. The record shows, by the way, it is especially the majority Democrats who talk big talk about transparency (and ethics in government), but who use their majority power to pass all manner of new laws that frequently include provisions to exempt from disclosure new public records that will result.

    Because of this poor state of transparency in Oregon, the entire exercise is exactly the vital educational experience through which Willson, who was hired in an instructional role as an advisor, should have been tutoring student journalists from beginning to end. On the whole, there is no "prep-work" relevant here. Data of this nature is publicly known to exist, so a vital part of these students' education is learning how to craft formal Public Records Requests with the specificity required to yield results at low cost. Although as noted, OSU appears to have handled this quite poorly, OSU does have an obligation to the public and students to try to enforce standards of pedagogy. (Again this is not a claim that OSU does that well or did it well in this case.)

    Now, if Willson is claiming what you characterize as "prep-work" was a legitimate part of her role as an instructor/advisor, that could be a legitimate question of whether her academic freedom as an advisor with instructional oblgations has been infringed. And that is a serious matter the Facultly Senate is empowered to take up with the Administration on behalf of any Professional or Academic faculty member. The G-T dropped the ball here also because this question is easily posed to appropriate Faculty Senate representatives for definitive answers.

    I actually have little doubt that OSU will produce any public records that it is required to disclose by law. The real question will be whether the Barometer and the G-T wrote good public records requests, will understand the records they get, and whether they will have the slightest interest and ability to set that information in proper context. (And I actually think the student-journalists on the Barometer stand to do better than the G-T on this last point.)

    After all, nine months ago the Oregon SOS released this report:

    Audit Recommends Greater Accountabilty Oregon University System

    What we got in sum was:

    1) Administrators and faculty complaining from the ivory tower how dare we average folks raise questions about the intricacies of the educational business we couldn't possibly understand.

    2) Lazy yawns from every press outlet in Oregon, and especially the G-T, who remained much more interested in reporting on "bread and circuises" of OSU sports.

    3) A Mayor, City Councilors, and a City Manager, and bunch of their long time cronies, who couldn't be bothered to actually represent the interests of citizens, including students. Instead, they and OSU officials continued to "Collaborate" to set public policy in a manner that institutionally deprecates full public participation in a systematic fashion. Of course, the citizens of Corvallis bear a big part of the blame for that because we get the government we elect.

    Sometimes, as the story indicates, it takes a couple of iterations to get public records. But if a requestor feels a public entity is withholding information to which the public has a right, that is an issue he or she needs to be taking up with elected officials in Salem who continue to decrease transparancy, and probably the very officials for whom he or she voted for the wrong, selfish, superficial reasons.
  20. Hammer
    Report Abuse
    Hammer - December 30, 2013 11:20 am
    I am a former writer for The Daily Barometer during my time at Oregon State University. Journalists were routinely quashed from reporting any "hard" news about the university. For example, a can of worms needed to be opened about Adderall/Ritalin abuse among students and how the Office of Disability Services were urging non-ADHD students to take it, even though they had no diagnosis. A student coming into the Disability Services department to ask for help to get tested for a potential disability involving dyscalculia was instead told to take Adderall and was told that they could be given the drug that day. Student said no and never did get tested or helped. That student was me, and I happened to be a writer for the Barometer. When I posed this potential story idea, the student editor was interested, but it eventually got shot down and I was told not to conduct any type of research or follow through with it or I would be let go.
    The entire media department is a complete joke. I would advise any potential journalism student to stay clear from OSU.
  21. TruthIs
    Report Abuse
    TruthIs - December 30, 2013 10:52 am
    @AliceP, as you frame it here, your argument is quite good, so this is not a criticism of your argument by any means.

    The problem is that Bennett himself really scrambled the presentation of a number of key details. We don't really know what OSU legal actually said or didn't say. Notice the critical information is all "hearsay" via Willson, so in a formal legal setting it wouldn't be admissible as evidence of OSU's position. The only actual relevant quote:

    "“This is an attorney-client communication. Please do not redistribute this email — or disclose its contents — without authorization from the OSU Office of the General Counsel.”

    reads like boilerplate that attorneys include in all communications with clients. And every university employee, when acting in the capacity as an agent of the university, would be a member of the "client". Even though the reporting as chaotic at best, assuming that that what it is relatively accurate as far as it goes, the relevant and quite easily answered question is whether OSU council was asserting it was representing Willson acting as an agent of OSU against a non-university party. That's the only scenario in which OSU council would be legally and ethically permitted to be Willson's council, and then only to the extent that representing Willson's interests as an agent of OSU is in OSU's interest, and in which the privilege would apply.

    In that case OSU would have the right to assert an employee may not waive the privilege without permission, with the sanction for any employee who waived the privilege without permission being the loss of representation by OSU council and, in some cases, employment, for comprising OSU's interests. Unfortunately, at least from the information presented in the story, Bennett and his editor really did drop the ball on this key, and easily clarified, point.

    Here's how simple it would have been:

    Bennett: Steve, is OSU council representing Willson because she is acting as an agent of the University?

    Steve: No. (In that case, end-of issue, Reeves is not Willson's attorney and the whole privilege issue is a moot distraction and your point about competence @AliceP comes front and center).

    Steve: Yes.

    Bennett: In what dispute and who is the non-university party to the dispute?

    Steve: (Names non-university party, or refuses to. Regardless, Bennett has a new, important dimension to the story).
  22. Fishwrapper
    Report Abuse
    Fishwrapper - December 30, 2013 10:38 am
    You'll be happy to know that the Journalism program at Oregon State University was shuttered decades ago. All that remains is student organizations; while academic "practicum" credit may be gained towards some degree programs, there is no Journalism program per se.

    With best regards,

    Will Overhead, '33
    The Fishwrapper
  23. TrueConservative
    Report Abuse
    TrueConservative - December 30, 2013 9:53 am
    Maybe this is more than petty tyranny and OSU is trying to hide something. Maybe something to do with how much their well-compensated state salary administrators manage to find lots of time to do additional work for outside organizations? And maybe how it's hard to figure out what exactly they do for OSU and the state?
  24. AliceP
    Report Abuse
    AliceP - December 30, 2013 9:46 am
    This 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 y a trained attorney.
  25. ciara
    Report Abuse
    ciara - December 30, 2013 9:37 am
    This is the tip of the iceberg, there are other things that OSU has been involved in--one day it shall be revealed.
  26. TrueConservative
    Report Abuse
    TrueConservative - December 30, 2013 9:34 am
    If you re-read the story, she asked for crime data and information about the compensation database. It would be foolish to set up a class project around data that either doesn't exist or won't meet the needs of the exercise, so it appears she was doing some initial prep work to make the class as effective as possible. The notion that OSU denied the request because it should be the students making it is a red herring.

    Now that the GT and the Barometer have signed on to the records request, what obfuscation or legal mumbo-jumbo will OSU come up with now?
  27. Karl Idsvoog
    Report Abuse
    Karl Idsvoog - December 30, 2013 9:26 am
    Any journalism school where students are not encouraged to file public records requests with the university should be closed. We don't need any schools of stenography. Any board of trustees that doesn't hold university administrators who fail to provide public records in accordance with public records law accountable should be replaced.

    Any j-school director who doesn't fight for access to public records should be fired.

    When journalism fails, bad things happen.
  28. jrhmobile
    Report Abuse
    jrhmobile - December 30, 2013 7:37 am
    I do agree that it would have better for students under Ms. Willson's charge to have submitted the public records requests -- both as an educational experience and as an ethical consideration. That's really her purpose as a publications adviser, and would have maintained clear boundaries and not have clouded the implications of a school employee asking for operational information on the university that employs her. It shouldn't cost her contract, but it just might on those standards.

    What's the statement? "We didn't fire you. We chose not to re-hire you ..."

    Nonetheless, she had every right to make the request, and to compel the university to honor it. OSU's obfuscation of its status as a legal entity without liability or responsibility in honoring such requests is a little too cute, and if pushed likely won't stand up to scrutiny. At best, it's a stalling tactic.
  29. Kurmudgeonorrgon
    Report Abuse
    Kurmudgeonorrgon - December 30, 2013 1:10 am
    Amazing how OSU administrators can continue to try to put a spin on this ... Especially Steve Clark who comes from a news/reporting/editors background. Is his paycheck really large enough for him to justify compromising his journalistic standards. Kind of ironic that he received his J degree from OSU, and as a student was an editor of The Daily Barometer.

    OSU administrators -- Please quit the obfuscation, rhetoric, and mind-numbing spin.

    On a much more positive note ... Thanks to Kate Wilson's efforts, the students in her workshop have been exposed to a real word experience in dealing with "create-the-rules-as-you-go" public agencies, and Oregon
  30. TruthIs
    Report Abuse
    TruthIs - December 29, 2013 8:03 pm
    By the way, under SB 270 universities who establish an independent board may:


    Section 11

    (L) Acquire, by condemnation or otherwise, private property that is necessary or con- venient. The right to acquire property by condemnation shall be exercised as provided by ORS chapter 35.


    Sort of throws a new light on the whole idea of the City government entering into "Collaboration Projects" that substantially disempower the public and deprecates the public's interests, and even in having current and former employees of the "New" OSU serve on City boards and commissions, not to to mention sit on Council that makes land use decisions, doesn't it?
  31. TruthIs
    Report Abuse
    TruthIs - December 29, 2013 7:24 pm
    On a separate note Bennett, there are three omissions in your story that really need to be addressed in a followup.

    1) If this is an issue of academic freedom, an implicature the story arguably invites, that is a matter it is the right of the Faculty Senate to raise with the Administration. Your story doesn't mention the Faculty Senate at all, and it is difficult to ascertain from your reporting exactly what principle is actually at issue here. Jim Day recently reported he now attends Faculty Senate meetings, so it shouldn't be too hard to get clarity on this question.

    2) You report "The meeting took another unexpected turn, Willson said, when Reeves stopped in mid-sentence to announce that Willson was her client and that they had a legally privileged attorney-client relationship."

    This doesn't make sense on its face and the story fail to clarify why it doesn't. As OSU Council, Reeve's only represents OSU employees against non-university parties, and only when the employee is acting as an agent of the university. Against what third party would Reeves have claimed to be representing Willson as an agent of OSU? The whole "attorney-client" privilege issue only makes sense in that context. The purpose of the privilege would be to protect information Reeves and Willson share from a non-university third party. Something critical is missing here and the story starts to lose credibility as a result of the incoherent reporting about this point, especially since you give no indication you addressed this problematic claim with Clarke. (And frankly, it seems unlikely Reeves would make such a nonsensical claim in the way reported. The whole privilege thing .)

    3) Finally you also report, although it should be noted this is not a quote: "Reeves argued that since OSU is not considered a person under the law, its employees do not qualify as persons for purposes of making public records requests." With the passage of SB 270 in the 2013 Legislative Session it is unclear what this even might mean.

    SB 270 says in part:

    Section 2a. A university with a governing board is a governmental entity performing governmental functions and exercising governmental powers. A university with a governing board is not considered a unit of local or municipal government or a state agency, board, commission or institution for purposes of state statutes or constitutional provisions.

    Section 2b. ….
    (2) A university with a governing board is an independent public body with statewide purposes and missions and without territorial boundaries.

    Section 11.. …
    A university with a governing board may:

    c. Make any and all contracts and agreements, enter into any partnership, joint venture or other business arrangement and create and participate fully in the operation of any business structure, including but not limited to the development of business structures and networks with any public or private government, nonprofit or for-profit person or entity, that in the judgment of the university or the governing board is necessary or appropriate.

    (n) Sue in its own name, be sued in its own name and issue and enforce subpoenas in its own name.


    Since OSU elected to establish a governing board, those provisions of SB 270 pretty much define OSU as a legal person. (An independent entity… that can enter into contract ... and sue or be sued).

    It should be noted that a few years back, the Oregon DOJ apparently advised CoverOregon to not register with the Corporations Division, which has raised some eyebrows since one of the purposes of registering with the Corporations Division is to publicly announce the entity's Registered Agent on whom suits and other legal notices may be served. The last I checked the universities with governing boards had not reigistered with the Corporation Division either.

    If there is some legal legerdemain behind what the story reports is Reeve's claim, that is in itself a big story that needs to be fully investigated by the press. There are serious legal and ethical conflicts ahead if these independent entities can enter into all manner of business relationships for their own financial benefit, but then might attempt to claim they are exempt under the law from any legal and ethical obligations that fall on corporate and other persons under the law.
  32. TruthIs
    Report Abuse
    TruthIs - December 29, 2013 6:29 pm
    Bennett, your story and the time it took to report it is appreciated.

    As you indicate, and if your reporting is accurate, there are some pedagogical problems in what Willson did that you don't summarize as succinctly as would be useful to the reader. Specifically, the appropriate pedagogical approach here would have been for Willson to use her expertise to tutor students through each step of the public records request process from the very beginning and let them do those steps. While she is within her legal right to make public records requests of a public institution that employes her, for the benefit of students and the public alike, in this case it is legitimate for OSU to examine questions about the pedagogy of a faculty member.

    That said, if your reporting is accurate and complete, the behavior by OSU officials in this case appears to have been high-handed and amateurish at best. That is a bigger question about problems with the competence of leadership and faculty in the academy generally today. This is an issue that the G-T, as a paper in a small town where a public institution of higher education has a dominant presence, quite arguably has a right and obligation to consistently address in a way it has generally failed to do, especially in recent years.

    More specifically, OSU is Day's beat, but the Collaboration Project is not an OSU story. Indeed, the behavior of OSU's administration in this case, if your reporting is accurate, reinforces the necessity of the press questioning why City officials have established a privileged relationship with OSU to set public policy that deprecates the public's interests and full participation. In reality, this is story about a deeper dysfunction in Corvallis's public processes and OSU's role in that. Yet the G-T has generally failed to do any substantial, critical reporting --- in the carefully researched and analyzed sense, not in the "negative" sense --- from the Corvallis side about the truly problematic nature of this relationship between Corvallis officials and OSU officials.

    In particular, the G-T has consistently failed to investigate and report on the on the full scope of the tools Corvallis officials do have, but consistently fail to use, to enforce standards of civic behavior on OSU. G-T reporters seldom follow up on their own, in a manner comparable to the reporting in this story, when informed citizens (and even sometime City Council members) raise serious, well-founded legal and policy issues about the City's and OSU's behavior, and are often met with condescending derision from both City and OSU officials.

    Your story is good reporting and should be appreciated by all as an insight into the problems of unaccountable institutions of which OSU is just another example. If this story is to be more than just infotainment, however, the real significance will be if and how the G-T's staff chooses to use it to enrich their own and the public's understanding of the City's obligation, and right as the representatives of all citizens including OSU students, to expect certain standards of institutional competence and civic behavior by OSU as a public institution of higher education. This is especially true in this time when administrators and faculty of public (and private) educational institutions quite arguably have lost sight of their primary obligations to society.
  33. 92837432
    Report Abuse
    92837432 - December 29, 2013 5:11 pm
    OSU Students: Submit further requests for the information to the university, realize you'll be losing a real advocate for students when Kate Willson's contract is not renewed, send this story's URL to others. Organize. Demonstrate. Protest.

    OSU Faculty: Realize you work for a power structure that bullies young women.

    Julia Sandidge: Stick up for your subordinates! Jeez.... can't you go to bat for people who work directly with you? I suppose you yourself have been intimidated and bullied by *your* supervisors....

    Beth Giddens: Do your job.

    Clark, Reeves, Hemmer: stand up for your employees and stand up for your own sense of what's right and wrong. Who are you trying to protect? Do you feel good about intimidating and bullying young women?
  34. WinstonSmith
    Report Abuse
    WinstonSmith - December 29, 2013 2:43 pm
    It is very common for state agencies to drag their feet (so to speak) in providing public access information when it is requested. There is a culture within many state agencies, and OSU is included, where this is acceptable practice. It should never be acceptable for state agencies to circumvent state law.
  35. TrueConservative
    Report Abuse
    TrueConservative - December 29, 2013 2:11 pm
    Thanks for the story. If there was any justice in the world, it would be Beth Giddens, Meg Reeves, and Julia Sandridge that should lose their jobs, not Willson.

    It's bad enough when public agencies hide information, it's pathetic when it's an institution of "higher" learning. These petty bureaucrats deserve pink slips.
  36. Petrificus Totalis
    Report Abuse
    Petrificus Totalis - December 29, 2013 1:46 pm
    Well done, Kate and Bennett. I suspect OSU came down hard on this because they don't want to set a precedent for disclosing anything at all. Who knows what else is waiting to be discovered by someone with initiative and focus...
  37. Snert
    Report Abuse
    Snert - December 29, 2013 1:22 pm
    Awesome story, Bennett Hall. This adviser deserves kudos. The school attorney is apparently an idiot. The attorney doesn't dictate attorney-client privilege! That is the prerogative of the client. I'm sorry this woman will lose her job, and I hope she goes on to greener pastures.
  38. gadfly
    Report Abuse
    gadfly - December 29, 2013 12:47 pm
    Thanks, Kate, for standing up to the Big Guys. Thanks, Bennett, for the good reporting job. And a special thanks to the OSU lawyer, Ms. Reeves, who has taught us once again why we should detest lawyers who feel a need to play God. Ed Ray, the guy who has set the tone for this defensive play by OSU, stays neatly on the sidelines, enjoying this episode as it plays out. Kate, this old guy suggests you are great at your job, but you're mismatched at OSU and I'm sure you'll find a better place next year. I envy your students! Good dedicated teachers are a rare find these days.
  39. WinstonSmith
    Report Abuse
    WinstonSmith - December 29, 2013 12:47 pm
    My sympathy, Ms Wilson. If you were in a meeting with Jeri Hemmer, then there is no question that the purpose of the meeting was to intimidate you. That is Jeri Hemmer's job at OSU. The culture of intimidation and bullying at Oregon State is horrific.
  40. UO Matters
    Report Abuse
    UO Matters - December 29, 2013 12:36 pm
    Excellent story. Sad, because under former VPFA Mark McCambridge OSU was a leader in financial transparency - see InsideHigherEd here: http://www.insidehighered.com/news/2008/03/07/financial

    More commentary on this is at
    http://www.uomatters.com/2013/12/oregon-state-panics-over-public-records-request-by-journalism-advisor.html
Add Comment
You must Login to comment.

Click here to get an account it's free and quick

activate-button-3 FULL ACCESS
50 Objects

Follow Us!

Events Calendar

Login or register to add your events to the calendar! Add event

Poll

Loading…

How would you rate 2014?

View Results