Young people's near-universal ability to publish online -- anytime, anywhere -- has provoked a flurry of legislative responses and judicial pronouncements, many of them blurring the boundaries that once confined schools' disciplinary authority within the proverbial "schoolhouse gate."Those blurry boundaries are in somewhat clearer focus today as a result of a pair of rulings by the 3rd U.S.
Author: Frank LoMonte
TRANSPARENCY TUESDAY: Who’s watching your wiener? Stadium eateries raise sanitation issues.
This is a story about risky wieners that has nothing to do with tweeting New York congressmen.Nebraska's Journal-Star newspaper recently looked into who was making sure the hot dogs served at the University of Nebraska-Lincoln's Coliseum were safe to eat.
FCC report dramatizes media industry’s dependence on student labor
While it's uncertain how the American public will get news in the future, and who'll pay the cost of reporting it, it is increasingly clear that the media will rely on unpaid college students not just as trainees but as front-line news gatherers.An exhaustive survey of the media landscape commissioned by the Federal Communications Commission includes among its recommendations that the donor community underwrite "journalism residencies" for new graduates along the model of residencies for newly graduated physicians.
“Sentenced” to write essay, videographer challenges fairness of UC-Berkeley disciplinary board
Considering that Josh Wolf had already spent seven months of his young journalistic career in jail, the "sentence" he received for his latest clash with the law might have seemed about as harsh as a Bart Simpson chalkboard apology.Still, Wolf continues contesting the penalty imposed by the University of California-Berkeley for his failure to leave a campus building while videotaping an anti-tuition-hike demonstration in November 2009: A five-page paper analyzing the rights of student journalists on campus and recommending disciplinary policies to avoid First Amendment clashes like the one that landed him in hot water."It was never about my punishment or my case at all," Wolf said Tuesday, discussing his decision to appeal.
TRANSPARENCY TUESDAY: Public record? “It depends on what your definition of ‘has’ is.”
People often wonder why the typical public-records request is so convoluted and full of legalese -- instead of asking for "documents," a request generally will ask for something like: "All letters, memos, audiotapes, videotapes, transcripts, emails, calendar entries..." and so on until the thesaurus has been exhausted.The reason is that, if you don't nail down all of the possibilities, a sharp-eyed government lawyer may spot the one tiny omission in your request and respond with a denial that is ultra-literally true but substantively unhelpful (i.e., "Well, we have time sheets, but we don't have any time cards").To illustrate, consider the case of Edinboro University of Pennsylvania, which was asked under Pennsylvania's Right-to-Know Law to produce the payroll records of a roofing company that was paid for repair work on a campus building.
Keeping secrets from the secret-keepers — FERPA officially “jumps the shark”
Oh, it's so hard not to enjoy this. So let's not even try.For years, school boards and their lawyers have been telling journalists and parents that just about any piece of substantive information they might need is top-secret under federal privacy law and exempt from state public-records statutes.Trends in discipline, statistics about school violence -- you name it, some enterprising school attorney can figure out how to squeeze it into the "black box" that is the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Even if there is no legitimate privacy interest at stake, and a compelling public interest in disclosure.Given the spiral of FERPA abuse, it was inevitable that schools would become so secretive that they'd start concealing information even from themselves.Welcome to Cherokee County, Georgia, which is facing the prospect that a fledgling charter school could face legal action under the Georgia Open Records Act for withholding a roster of its currently enrolled students...From its own school board.You read that right.
TRANSPARENCY TUESDAY: What’s better than getting paid six figures to work? Getting paid six figures not to.
An intriguing debate is simmering in news-industry circles as to whether it's a legitimate journalistic function to publicly distribute a database of government employee salaries, or just an invitation to voyeurism.
Free speech organizations urge caution on federal anti-bullying guidelines
The sickening loss of young people harassed to the point of suicide has policymakers at all levels of government scrambling for answers.
Supreme Court’s Camreta ruling raises one more barrier to students’ constitutional claims
The courthouse door that a federal appeals court began closing on student litigants in 2007 inched a little more tightly shut on Thursday, when the Supreme Court avoided deciding whether child-abuse investigators violated the Fourth Amendment when they interrogated a 9-year-old potential victim.In the case, Camreta v.
TRANSPARENCY TUESDAY: If it ‘looks like, smells like, walks like, and quacks like a duck’ — then FOIA it!
The nonprofit lobbying organizations that represent city councils, school boards and other governmental entities are undergoing significant, and much-needed, scrutiny by state legislatures and in the courts.The disclosure that the (since-removed) head of the Iowa Association of School Boards received an under-the-table raise boosting her annual pay to an eye-popping $367,000 -- three times what the governor of Iowa makes -- prompted Iowa legislators to patch a loophole in state law and require the IASB to make its records and meetings public just as the Association's member school boards must.Associations representing school boards, superintendents and principals wield enormous influence over policy-making at the state level, and are able to trade on their "quasi-public" goodwill when it suits their strategic purposes.