Student activity fees can be like those last-minute mystery charges tacked onto the bottom line when you're buying a new car.
Tag: Transparency Tuesday
TRANSPARENCY TUESDAY: Stun-gun death of Cincinnati college student invites questions to your local campus police
Campus police often are secretive with information, but there are times when public records are a matter of life and death.
TRANSPARENCY TUESDAY: Widening school cheating scandals illustrate the power of public records
One of the under-appreciated secrets to being a master public-records reporter is figuring out exactly what types of statistics government agencies keep.
TRANSPARENCY TUESDAY: Nobody likes audits. Nobody, except reporters.
Auditors are just like reporters, only with better salaries and MUCH better access. They spend their days picking through government agencies' spending for signs that programs are working ineffectively or that money is being spent wastefully.
TRANSPARENCY TUESDAY: Universities’ scientific research goes under the open-records microscope
Skeptics who question the conclusions of scientific studies have discovered a powerful tool in state open-records laws.
TRANSPARENCY TUESDAY: Shedding light on the true magnitude of college costs and student debt
Consumers avidly price-shop for the most expensive purchase in their lives (houses) and the third-most expensive purchase in their lives (cars) -- but when it comes to the second-most expensive purchase, emotions ("Whoa, is that a rock-climbing wall?") sometimes override dollars-and-cents.
TRANSPARENCY TUESDAY: Reviewing citizen complaints should be a police-beat staple
At least since "don't tase me, Bro" entered the national vocabulary as a T-shirt slogan and late-night punchline, the public has been fascinated by how university police use force in dealing with unruly but unthreatening members of the campus community.When working the campus police beat, journalists should make an at-least-annual public-records check for citizen complaints alleging unprofessional conduct by police, to see how many complaints are occurring and how they are being resolved.Public access to police complaint records was spotlighted by a recent state Supreme Court decision, allowing a lower court's ruling to stand, that the New Mexico sunshine law requires disclosure of citizen complaint files.In August 2010, the state Court of Appeals decided that the New Mexico Inspection of Public Records Act does cover records of complaints filed against officers of the state Department of Public Safety.
TRANSPARENCY TUESDAY: School, college contracting practices are a rich vein for FOI data mining
When a government agency, including a state college or a school district, goes into the market for anything from legal services to canned tomatoes, ethics laws normally require shopping around.
TRANSPARENCY TUESDAY: Star athletes are big wheels on campus, but whose wheels are they driving?
NCAA Division I football players are among the world's most finely conditioned athletes, capable of bench-pressing a quarter of a ton, dashing 40 yards in less than 4.5 seconds, and leaping nearly four feet in the air from a standing start.Signaling for left turns?
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.