Student journalist sues OU for access to parking ticket information

The University of Oklahoma's claim that parking tickets issued to students are private educational records is being challenged in court by a former online editor for The Oklahoma Daily.
 
Joey Stipek is asking a Cleveland County judge to order OU officials to release all parking citations issued by the university.
 
Stipek's lawsuit, filed Friday, stems from OU's refusal to release electronic copies of parking citations issued to students in the spring 2012 semester. OU's open records officer, Rachel McCombs, claimed the information is confidential under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, according to Stipek's lawsuit.
 
OU and Oklahoma State University officials have made that claim for years even though courts in other states have ruled otherwise.
 
In 1998, for example, the Maryland Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that FERPA "was not intended to preclude the release of any record simply because the record contained the name of a student." (Kirwan v. The Diamondback, 721 A.2d 196, 27 Media L. Rep. 1399 (Md. Ct. App. 1998))
 
The court reasoned:

The federal statute was obviously intended to keep private those aspects of a student's educational life that relate to academic matters or status as a student.
 
Nevertheless, in addition to protecting the privacy of students, Congress intended to prevent educational institutions from operating in secrecy.
 
Prohibiting disclosure of any document containing a student's name would allow universities to operate in secret, which would be contrary to one of the policies behind the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
 
Universities could refuse to release information about criminal activity on campus if students were involved, claiming that this information constituted education records, thus keeping very important information from other students, their parents, public officials, and the public.
 
We hold that "education records" within the meaning of the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act do not include records of parking tickets or correspondence between the NCAA and the University regarding a student-athlete accepting a loan to pay parking tickets.

The university's student newspaper had sought the records after learning that a basketball player had nearly 300 parking violations, many for parking in handicapped spaces, and more than $8,000 in unpaid parking fines.
 
In 2011, a North Carolina judge ruled that parking tickets issued to UNC athletes "are not education records protected by FERPA."
 
The "remote possibility" that repeated parking violations would result in disciplinary action "does not constitute a sufficient 'threat' to cloak every student with invisibility about the number of parking tickets he or she receives," the judge said.
 
(Similarly, the judge ruled that student phone numbers on UNC coaches' cell phone bills were public records, saying: "FERPA does not provide a student with an invisible cloak so that the student can remain hidden from public view while enrolled at UNC. The telephone number is not part of the education record protected by FERPA.")
 
The N.C. judge's ruling was another example of courts telling universities that "FERPA is not to be applied in an absurd way to conceal information that is not educational," said Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center.
 
LoMonte recently said OSU officials shouldn't just ignore those court rulings and should stop "relying on this unsustainable interpretation of FERPA that is inconsistent with the way other people read it and undermines the public interest."
 
If parking tickets are indeed educational records, LoMonte told The Daily O'Collegian, then the university is violating FERPA by placing them on windshields in public view.
 
"They certainly wouldn't take your report card and stick it under your windshield wiper and leave it on public display for anyone to see," LoMonte said.
 
Stipek had sought OU's parking tickets to determine if preferential treatment had been given to anyone, especially athletes.
 
After being denied access, Stipek asked for all non-student parking citations. But the university replied that it didn't have the technological capability to redact student information from the database, according to his petition.
 
Stipek's lawsuit was filed against McCombs and OU President David Boren. Stipek's attorney is Nicholas Harrison, who received FOI Oklahoma's 2012 Ben Blackstock Award because of his reporting for The Oklahoma Daily as a University of Oklahoma law school student.
 

 
Joey Senat, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
OSU School of Media & Strategic Communications
 
The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the commentators and do not necessarily represent the position of FOI Oklahoma Inc., its staff, or its board of directors. Differing interpretations of open government law and policy are welcome.

OSU winner of Black Hole Award from national SPJ

The national Society of Professional Journalists has selected Oklahoma State University as the winner of its third-annual Black Hole Award.
 
Oklahoma State was nominated by the Student Press Law Center for, among other things, ignoring the Clery Act in not notifying students, the public or its own police department that university officials were aware of the presence of an accused serial sex offender on campus. When asked why, OSU officials cited FERPA confidentiality requirements.
 
SPJ FOI Committee member Don Meyers said:

Using a federal education privacy law that pertains to grades to keep the campus in the dark about a sex offender who appears to be predatory is the textbook definition of egregious. If a municipal police force had pulled that shenanigan, they'd be in trouble on multiple fronts. FERPA was not meant to be a "Harry Potter"-like invisibility cloak that could turn any record that names a student into a protected document.”

(The Board of Regents for Oklahoma State University and the OSU administration were given FOI Oklahoma's Black Hole Award in 2009 for "routinely conducting the public’s business outside the public’s view. Regents secretly discuss proposals among themselves and with college officials prior to public meetings.”
 
OSU administrators were faulted for claiming public business conducted on personal smart phones is secret, in contradiction to interpretations by attorneys general in several states. An Oklahoma attorney general opinion later said public business is public regardless of whether the government or the official owns the device used to create or maintain the record.)
 
For information on SPJ's Black Hole Award, contact Linda Petersen, chairman of the national SPJ FOI Committee, at 801-554-7513.
 

 

OCCC officials cite FERPA, HIPAA, ADA as reasons for not releasing information in police records; seem to violate Clery Act by taking weeks to provide crime reports

Oklahoma City Community College's campus newspaper has detailed in a two-part series several apparent violations of the state Open Records Act and the federal Clery Act by school officials. 


Last week, The Pioneer reported that OCCC officials have cited three federal statutes -- the Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act, the Health Insurance Portability & Accountability Act, and the Americans with Disabilities Act -- as reasons for not releasing police records. 


National experts disagreed that those statute prohibit the release of information by campus police. 


For example, FERPA exempts law enforcement records, which the statute defines as records created by the law enforcement unit for a law enforcement purpose and maintained by the law enforcement unit. 


 Such records "are not 'education records' subject to the privacy protections of FERPA," says the U.S. Department of Education. "As such, the law enforcement unit ... may disclose law enforcement unit records to third parties without the eligible student's prior written consent."
 
Meanwhile, the Open Records Act requires that police records provide the name, date of birth, address, race, sex, physical description, and occupation of people arrested. (OKLA. STAT. tit. 51, § 24A.8(A)(1)) 


Yet, the newspaper reported, OCCC officials blacked out on a police report the name and other identifying information for a student arrested after he was reported to be sharpening a knife in class and then threatening classmates and the professor. 


According to the newspaper, OCCC Media Relations Coordinator Cordell Jordan also has cited HIPAA and the ADA as reasons to redact information or withhold reports when campus police respond to accidents and injuries. OCCC attorney Nancy Gerrity defended that reasoning.


But the Student Press Law Center's attorney said campus officials are "misinformed, lying, or both" if they cite FERPA, HIPAA and the ADA as reasons not to release information in police reports. 


 "HIPAA applies to organizations that have a primary business of providing health care, insurance, or electronic records transactions for those companies; obviously, law enforcement has a primary business of enforcing the law and thus, none of its records are HIPAA records,” Adam Goldstein told the newspaper. 


 "The ADA isn't a privacy statute at all," he said. "It’s an anti-discrimination statute. "It requires employers to treat individuals with qualified disabilities fairly and make reasonable accommodations for their disabilities. 


"It has nothing whatsoever to do with records of any kind or the release of those records. If someone is citing the ADA as a basis for not releasing records, they're not even misinterpreting the law, they're just saying the names of laws they’ve heard that sound kind of official." 


Student Press Law Center Executive Director Frank D. LoMonte agreed that HIPAA, FERPA and the ADA are not valid reasons for withholding campus police reports. 


"First of all, HIPAA is almost always a false justification for refusing to turn over public records. HIPAA applies only to two types of people: Health care professionals, or insurers," LoMonte told the newspaper.


"If the college has someone's medical information because that person, for example, committed a crime or was injured in an accident, the college is in no way restricted by HIPAA from releasing that information. HIPAA is not a blanket health care secrecy law — it applies only to your doctor or your medical insurance carrier, not to colleges. 


"FERPA is never, ever a valid reason for a college to withhold or redact crime reports, period," he said. 


LoMonte told The Pioneer that citing the ADA as a "justification for withholding public records is so frivolous that it almost seems like it must be a joke." 


This week, The Pioneer also reported that OCCC officials have taken weeks and months to provide public records. 


For example, the newspaper said, the police report regarding the student arrested for sharpening a knife in class and threatening others was provided three weeks after the incident. 


The Clery Act, however, requires that such incidences be reported on a publicly available crime log within two business days of their initial report to the campus police or the campus security department. 


The Pioneer also provided examples of lengthy delays for non-police records. 


Under the Open Records Act, "A public body must provide prompt, reasonable access to its records...." (OKLA. STAT. tit. 51, § 24A.5(5)) 


A 1999 attorney general opinion stated succinctly that "prompt, reasonable access" generally means "only the time required to locate and compile" the public records. (1999 OK AG 58, ¶ 15) 


Oklahoma public agencies and officials have a "duty" to provide public records to the public. 


Then-Attorney General Drew Edmondson said:

The purpose of the Act is 'to ensure and facilitate the public’s right of access to and review of government records so they may efficiently and intelligently exercise their inherent political power.' To fulfill this purpose the Act imposes a duty on a public body to 'provide prompt, reasonable access to its records' and make a person available to release records during the public body's regular business hours. (2005 OK AG 3, ¶ 4)

In a 2005 public records training video for police, Edmondson acknowledged that the time in which agencies must respond "varies with the circumstances." 


But he also distinguished between "a detailed request for records that's going to require looking back over the past 12 months and pulling files that may already be in storage" and one for records "that are sitting right there on your desk and all you have to do is go to the copy machine." 


"In most instances," he said, "open records requests should be responded to on the spot."


The Pioneer also noted that all records requests must be made to the OCCC Marketing and Public Relations office, a process that only delays access. 


Funneling all media requests for records through one office runs contrary to a 2005 attorney general opinion requiring that government documents be made available where they "are located in the ordinary course of business." 


"If a public body has more than one office location, its records must be maintained and made available to the public at the office where the records are located in the ordinary course of business," Edmondson said. (2005 OK AG 3, ¶ 10) 


"The Act does not expressly address at what office location records must be maintained and made available to the public if a public body has more than one office location. It is our opinion that the 'prompt, reasonable access' to records that the public must be provided under the Act indicates the Legislature's intent that the public body's records shall be maintained and available at the office where the records are located in the ordinary course of business,” he said. (Id. ¶ 8) 


LoMonte told the newspaper that delayed access indicates the low level of importance that OCCC officials place on being held accountable to the public. 


It also indicates how little respect OCCC officials have for students, faculty, staff and the general public. 


OCCC administrators act as though they are running a high school or a private college. But this is a publicly funded college. 


Students, faculty and other taxpayers are entitled to know about what happens on campus, particularly when it involves police. 


OCCC officials, however, are treating college journalists with the same disrespect that many high school administrators show for their students. 


Kudos to The Pioneer editors and reporters for standing up for the public's right and need to know. But they'll need help if OCCC officials' attitudes and practices are to change. 


Local and federal officials have an obligation to investigate what the newspaper has reported and to hold OCCC officials accountable for violations of state and federal law.


Local media also have an obligation to help by spreading the word to a larger audience. Back up these college journalists. Don't stand by while they are bullied by government officials. 




Joey Senat, Ph.D. 
Associate Professor 
OSU School of Media & Strategic Communications 


The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the commentators and do not necessarily represent the position of FOI Oklahoma Inc., its staff, or its board of directors. Differing interpretations of open government law and policy are welcome.

N.C. judge: Parking tickets issued to state university students aren't education records protected by FERPA

A North Carolina judge on Tuesday ruled that parking tickets issued to UNC athletes are not education records protected by a federal student privacy law, the Student Press Law Center reports.

Why does this matter in Oklahoma?

Because a year ago, officials of Oklahoma State University and the University of Oklahoma refused to release names of ticket recipients, saying disclosure would violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.

OSU and OU officials argued that the parking citations are not created for law enforcement purposes, which would make them public under FERPA. Instead, the tickets are processed administratively and therefore, officials contended, are education records protected by FERPA.

University of North Carolina officials apparently made the same argument. But the North Carolina judge didn't buy it, saying:

The parking tickets issued by UNC Public Safety, if any, to 11 players are not education records protected by FERPA.

While section 6-3 of Article VI, Parking Control of the UNC Ordinance relating to parking on the campus of UNC permits, after repeated offenses, may result in referral to an appropriate agency for disciplinary action, the receipt of a parking ticket, in and of itself, is not subject to disciplinary action and thus, is not protected educational information under FERPA.

If a parking scofflaw were to reach the repeated, repeated stage and was referred to disciplinary action, such disciplinary action would be covered under FERPA.

However, this remote possibility does not constitute a sufficient "threat" to cloak every student with invisibility about the number of parking tickets he or she receives. Parking tickets are subject to civil not criminal penalties.

UNC will have 30 days to appeal after the judge issues a formal written order, the SPLC said.

SPLC Executive Director Frank LoMonte said the decision is another indication from courts that "FERPA is to be applied in a common sense manner that recognizes the importance of disclosure and transparency."

"Court after court has told schools that FERPA is not to be applied in an absurd way to conceal information that is not educational and this is yet another affirmation that FERPA can't be abused to conceal newsworthy and non-confidential information," LoMonte said.

Unfortunately, OSU and OU officials aren't likely to release their parking citation information based on anything short of a clarification by the U.S. Department of Education or an Oklahoma court order.


Joey Senat, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
OSU School of Media & Strategic Communications


The opinions expressed in this blog are those of the commentators and do not necessarily represent the position of FOI Oklahoma Inc., its staff, or its board of directors. Differing interpretations of open government law and policy are welcome.

National education reporter questions claim by OSU, OU that FERPA prohibits release of campus parking ticket data

Claims by two Oklahoma universities that releasing campus parking ticket data would violate student privacy laws were questioned by a top education reporter at a recent national conference.

Oklahoma State University and the University of Oklahoma last spring both refused requests to release parking ticket data. OSU alone issued more than 18,000 tickets from Aug. 1, 2009, to April 9, 2010, The Daily O'Collegian reported.

Officials for OSU and OU say releasing names of ticket recipients would violate the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal statute passed to protect specific student records, such as grades.

“I don’t see how that argument could ever stand up,” said Kathryn Masterson, a reporter for The Chronicle of Higher Education.

Masterson made her comments during a panel discussion on higher education at the Investigative Reporters and Editors national conference in June. More than 800 journalists attended.

“My question might be why? Are they pulling in more money from parking tickets?” Masterson asked.

The universities made the argument in response to a request by a student journalist at Oklahoma State University.

Universities that use FERPA to deny access to campus parking ticket information were called “obstructionist” by the Student Press Law Center.

FERPA is one of the most widely used --- and abused --- excuses for universities seeking to withhold records that would otherwise be public under state sunshine laws. Courts have repeatedly struck down such broad interpretations.

“And yet colleges persist in defining any piece of paper in their possession as an ‘educational record’ when nondisclosure suits their purposes,” the SPLC said in a press release last May.

Universities have even used FERPA to refuse public access to college athletic departments’ airplane passenger manifests and complimentary ticket lists, a 2009 report by The Columbus Dispatch showed. The newspaper also showed that FERPA has been used to block parents from getting life-saving information about their own children’s medical conditions.

In another case, a Wisconsin university provided an “almost completely erased” tape recording of a university committee meeting to a campus newspaper. The university argued the voices of students at the public meeting are shielded by FERPA, the SPLC reported.

Northwestern Oklahoma State University's claim in June that FERPA prohibits it from disclosing which students receive scholarships funded by Alva's sales taxes is another example of why the statute is "broken," said the SPLC executive director.

Former U.S. Sen. James L. Buckley of New York, the primary FERPA author, has said the law “needs to be revamped” because of abuses by colleges and universities.


Ryan McNeill
Computer-Assisted Reporting Editor
Dallas Morning News

NWOSU asks federal education officials if names of discretionary scholarship recipients are public information

Northwestern Oklahoma State University will ask federal education officials if the names of students receiving scholarships funded by Alva sales taxes may be disclosed to the public, NWOSU President Janet Cunningham said in a recent newspaper column.

But the answer might already be "no."

In May 2009, the Education Department advised the University of Central Arkansas at Conway "not to release the names of who got millions of dollars in publicly funded, no-criteria, discretionary scholarships under the UCA president’s auspices," the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette reported.

After the federal official who wrote the letter was fired in February, the newspaper appealed his decision regarding UCA's now-discontinued Presidential Discretionary Scholarship Program.

But in a recent letter, the Education Department's compliance office "stood by its old decision," reporter Debra Hale-Shelton told the FOI Oklahoma Blog.

However, she said, the office "also suggested that certain scholarships not related to financial aid needs were exempt."

"Still, UCA refused to release the information," Hale-Shelton said.

She had asked UCA for the names after learning that "some of the people on that list got these scholarships because they were friends or children of friends of the former president, Lu Hardin," Hale-Shelton told the Student Press Law Center in 2009.

"[The scholarships] were political favors," she said.

In an article this past February, Hale-Shelton noted that "the very thing that made the presidential discretionary scholarships an issue was one reason" the federal official said UCA should not disclose the names.

The then-director of the Family Policy Compliance Office had cited the lack of published criteria as a reason for not disclosing which students received the scholarships.

Some universities include scholarships in the definition of honors and awards received by students, which the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act lets schools disclose unless the student has objected in writing.

But the exception would not apply “in situations where the basis for the scholarship is undefined or could be need-based or related to a student’s financial need,” wrote then-Director Paul Gammill.

“Because the release of this type of scholarship information in personally identifiable form could be potentially harmful or an invasion of privacy, FERPA would preclude the university from disclosing this information without the prior written consent of the recipient,” Gammill wrote.

UCA's scholarships seem similar to those awarded by NWOSU.

NWOSU officials in June refused to disclose who got scholarships funded by the Alva Economic Development Incentive Sales Tax Grant this past spring. The school had made the information public for 10 years under an agreement with the city.

But the general counsel for the Regional University System of Oklahoma told the school that disclosing the names violates FERPA, said NWOSU's president in a column published June 27 in the Alva Review-Courier.

NWOSU distributed $214,000 from the scholarship fund for the spring semester. The money comes from a 1999 city sales tax approved by Alva voters for economic development.

"Half was dedicated to Northwestern to create an incentive for students to attend Northwestern and establish a permanent or part-time residence in Alva," Cunningham wrote in her column. "The charge to Northwestern was simple – use the money in the best way possible to attract the largest number of students."

In January, The Alva Review-Courier raised questions about the distribution of the fall semester scholarships.

Of the $220,222, NWOSU awarded $57,000 to 57 athletes, the newspaper reported. Each received $1,000, which was the largest amount given to students. In contrast, 18 students received valedictorian scholarships of $750 each.

Cunningham said the university "continues to make available to all members of the city council a list of students who receive funds, the amounts they receive, and the purpose of the award – such as participation in an extra-curricular program."

"The people elected to represent us on the city council have access to all information regarding the program," Cunningham said. "However, in Mr. (Charlie) Babb's opinion, FERPA precludes the public disclosure of this information without the student's permission."

Wouldn't disclosing the names to council members be a FERPA violation? If not, why can't the information be released to the public?

Aren't Alva's residents entitled to know if their tax money is being doled out as it was intended?

City leaders thought so in 1999 when NWOSU agreed to disclose the names of recipients, how much each received and why each was chosen to get the scholarship. Didn't university officials determine then if disclosing the names would violate FERPA?

Joey Senat, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

OSU School of Media and Strategic Communications

NWOSU's FERPA-claim for secrecy garners national criticism

Northwestern Oklahoma State University's claim that a federal privacy law prohibits it from disclosing which students receive scholarships funded by Alva's sales taxes is another example of why the statute is "broken," said the executive director of the Student Press Law Center.

"This is yet another example of why Congress and the Department of Education have to fix this broken statute. It's just far too easy for people who want to conceal embarrassing information to cry 'FERPA,'" said Frank LoMonte on the SPLC website Tuesday.

The distribution of more than $220,000 in scholarships last fall was questioned in January by Helen Barrett, an editor for The Alva Review-Courier and an FOI Oklahoma board member.

Barrett and the FOI Oklahoma Blog reported early last week that NWOSU officials say the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act prohibits them from disclosing the names of recipients even though they have done so for the past 10 years under an agreement with the city.

At least some of the scholarship winners also have signed a FERPA form permitting the school to notify their hometown newspapers.

NWOSU handed out $214,000 from the scholarship fund for the recent spring semester.

Alva Councilman Roger Hardaway, who had insisted on seeing the list of recipients, told the SPLC he will again bring up the issue of public disclosure at the Council's meeting on July 6.


Joey Senat, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

OSU School of Journalism

Newspaper criticizes OU, OSU for keeping student parking tickets secret

OU and OSU officials are defying common sense by claiming that parking tickets issued to students are confidential educational records, The Oklahoman said in an editorial Saturday.

"The federal law was designed to protect students’ academic records, not such things as tickets issued to students for parking in the faculty lot," the newspaper said.

The universities refused to disclose the tickets to a student in my reporting course and later to a reporter for The Oklahoman. The student's story was published in The Daily O'Collegian and on this blog.

OSU and OU officials contend the tickets are confidential under the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. Open government experts disagree with that interpretation of the federal statute.

In its editorial, The Oklahoman called on federal education officials "to clean up and simplify the law."

"Meantime, the application of common sense is in order," the newspaper said.

Joey Senat, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

OSU School of Journalism

OSU, OU officials refuse to disclose parking citations given to students, say tickets are educational records protected by FERPA

(This story was written by Elise Jenswold, a student in my reporting course this spring. It was published Tuesday in The Daily O'Collegian. Thank you to FOI Oklahoma members Bob Nelon and Mike Minnis for their time spent answering questions for the article. -- Joey Senat)

Oklahoma’s two major public universities will not disclose parking citation records containing student names, claiming they are educational records protected from disclosure by a federal privacy law.

But three open records experts said they believe the records are public under the state’s Open Records Act because committing a parking violation has nothing to do with a student’s education.

A Maryland appellate court used the same reasoning in 1997 when it unanimously ruled that the same records at the University of Maryland were open under that state’s public records law. (Kirwan v. The Diamondback, 721 A.2d 196, 27 Media L. Rep. 1399 (Md. Ct. App. 1998))

The Maryland Court of Appeals said the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act was not intended “to preclude the release of any record simply because the record contained the name of a student.”

“The federal statute was obviously intended to keep private those aspects of a student’s educational life that relate to academic status as a student,” the court said. “Prohibiting disclosure of any document containing a student’s name would allow universities to operate in secret, which would be contrary to one of the policies behind the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.”

The university’s student newspaper, The Diamondback, sought the records after learning that a basketball player had 285 parking violations, many for parking in handicapped spaces, and more than $8,000 in unpaid parking fines.

Oklahoma State University issued more than 18,029 parking tickets to students, faculty and visitors from Aug. 1 to April 9, according to university records.

OSU officials took 14 days to respond to a reporter’s request for the database of student parking violations. Ultimately, the university refused to disclose the names of students who received citations and provided only the types of violations that occurred in campus parking lots.

OSU attorney Doug Price said the individual records of citations given to students are educational records that must be kept confidential under FERPA.

University of Oklahoma officials also cited student privacy when they denied access to that school’s database of parking citations issued to students.

“I don’t believe I will be able to release student names. That has to be against a privacy right,” said Kris Glenn, a marketing and public relations specialist for OU’s parking and transit department.

OU’s open records administrator offered to provide “numbers and statistics, but no names because of student’s privacy.” Rachel McCombs said OU records containing student information could not be disclosed without a release form signed by the student.

FERPA defines educational records as school documents that “contain information directly related to a student.”

But Oklahoma City attorneys Bob Nelon and Michael Minnis said they don’t believe the parking citations are educational records because they are not related to student education.

FERPA excludes “records maintained by a law enforcement unit of the educational agency or institution that were created by that law enforcement unit for the purpose of law enforcement.”

The U.S. Department of Education has defined enforcement units as including commissioned officers or non-commissioned security guards authorized or designated to enforce state and local laws, or to “maintain the physical security and safety” of the campus.

Price said OSU’s parking citations “are processed through an administrative process and are not created for a ‘law enforcement’ purpose.”

An attorney for the Student Press Law Center, however, disagreed with Price’s interpretation of the statute.

“The definition of law enforcement unit is any part of the school that is officially authorized to enforce any state, local or federal law, or to refer people to proper authorities for violations of those laws,” said Adam Goldstein. “It doesn’t matter who is writing these tickets —if the Dean of Students is writing parking tickets, the Dean’s office is a law enforcement unit under the regulations and can’t cite FERPA to avoid disclosing law enforcement records.”

A 1998 written opinion by the Kansas attorney general drew a distinction between parking citations enforceable as misdemeanors and those enforceable only as administrative policies.

“If a university's parking rules and policies are legally enforceable as a misdemeanor, then the parking tickets may be exempt from FERPA as law enforcement records and thus not subject to its confidentiality requirements,” the opinion stated.

“Alternately, if the parking tickets are only enforceable on an administrative level within the university, they are more analogous to disciplinary records, which we believe are ‘education records’ which are generally closed by FERPA,” the opinion stated.

According to OSU policies, “Parking rules and regulations are enforced on campus by OSU Police Officers and OSU Parking Cadets.” Students, faculty, staff and campus visitors may appeal their citations.

“Visitors that receive a parking citation for the first time may get that ticket waived,” the policy states. “However, excessive violations or violations for parking in reserved or restricted parking areas, such as disability or spaces signed for specific vehicles will be enforced.”

OU’s parking regulations are enforced “primarily by Parking Control personnel of the Parking Office, who wear black and tan uniforms.”

“University parking citations are adjudicated wholly within the University as an administrative process,” according to OU policy.

OSU’s Doug Price also contended that even if the records were considered law enforcement records exempted from FERPA, they would not be subject to the state Open Records Act because they are not explicitly listed in the statute as records that police must provide to the public.

Nelon and Minnis, each of whom has won open records cases, disagreed with Price’s interpretation.

Nelon said that while the term "citation" is not used, “a citation presumably includes the kinds of information identified” in the list.

“Parking citations ought to be made available as public records,” said Nelon.

Subsequent media coverage:

• Oklahoma universities' parking ticket secrecy stirs questions, by Bryan Dean, The Oklahoman, 5.9.10.
• Are students' parking tickets public records? by Jenna Johnson, Campus Overload Blog, The Washington Post, 5.10.10.
• Common sense needed, Editorial, The Oklahoman, 5.15.10.

Joey Senat, Ph.D.

Associate Professor

OSU School of Journalism