Margaret Hynds, editor in chief of the Notre Dame Observer, noticed last November that HB 1019, a law former Indiana governor Mike Pence signed, classified private university police departments as public agencies.
A mixture of positive and negative changes to state open records laws have slowly been making their way through state legislatures in the past few weeks.
The New Voices campaign is sprinting off the block this year with the first anti-Hazelwood legislation of 2017 being filed in Indiana.
By Shea Smith Sophie Gordon was born in Fuzhou, China and moved to the United States when she was just ten-months-old. After living roughly a year-and-a-half in Iowa, her family moved to St. Charles, Missouri before she left for college to attend Ball State University. She is a rising junior at Ball State in Indiana… Continue reading Introducing Active Voice Fellow Sophie Gordon
The bill would have superseded a recent Indiana Court of Appeals ruling that said state private universities' police departments are subject to public records law.
The state appellate court ruled that Notre Dame's police force is a public agency subject to the public records law, but a bill heading to the governor's desk would shield private universities from releasing the same amount of records as public institutions.
Some public access advocates are worried that the bill simply echoes the requirements set by the federal Clery Act instead of advancing transparency in private universities' police forces.
The University of Notre Dame police department does not have to give ESPN access to police records about student athletes because it is not a public agency under the state’s open records law, a county judge ruled on Monday.
Sen. John Whitmire proposed a bill on Jan. 15 to amend the Texas Education Code to require police departments at private colleges to follow the state’s public records law just like other law enforcement agencies. The bill has been referred to the Senate Committee on Criminal Justice, which has not yet set a date for a public hearing.
ESPN has filed suit against the University of Notre Dame, alleging the private institution violated Indiana’s public records law when it withheld police incident reports about student athletes.