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.









Please Wait…
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.
http://aviewfromthebubble.com/2013/12/31/mismanagement-overreaction-nothing-new-at-osu/
Good on Kate for sticking to her guns despite the intimidation.
Now, lets see what they're hiding from the tax payers....
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.
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.
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?
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.
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
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.
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.
The entire media department is a complete joke. I would advise any potential journalism student to stay clear from OSU.
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).
With best regards,
Will Overhead, '33
The Fishwrapper
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?
Any j-school director who doesn't fight for access to public records should be fired.
When journalism fails, bad things happen.
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.
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
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?
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.
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.
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?
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.
More commentary on this is at
http://www.uomatters.com/2013/12/oregon-state-panics-over-public-records-request-by-journalism-advisor.html