A&M revisits ruling after outcry

from Chron.com:

Texas A&M University officials will take a second look at a controversial decision widely seen as an attempt to prevent student journalists at Tarleton State University from investigating their own school's public records.

Andrew Strong, A&M's general counsel, said Wednesday he wasn't aware of all of the facts when he crafted a letter that extended existing rules, which ban employees from abusing the Public Information Act, to include journalism students working on optional class assignments. Tarleton is part of the A&M University System.

[...]

The A&M rule, in effect since the mid-1990s, prohibits system employees from making public information requests of their employer. The rule was drafted after an employee used the law to make frivolous information requests, leaving A&M with the tab for the required research and compliance.

The regulation went unused until the fall semester.

Several Tarleton journalism students were part of The Light of Day project, a statewide initiative sponsored by the Freedom of Information Foundation of Texas to teach them how to use open records requests to develop investigative articles.

The goal of the project, said FOI Foundation executive director Keith Elkins, was to gather public information, share it and report on it.

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A&M limits faculty's open-records assignments

from statesman.com:

Faculty members and open-records advocates are criticizing a Texas A&M University System policy that bars professors from directing students to submit public information requests to A&M campuses and agencies.

Journalism teachers sometimes instruct students to file such requests under the Texas Public Information Act to gain experience using an important tool for reporters.

[....]

"It looks like something that would be in The Onion," Wanda Garner Cash, a clinical professor of journalism at the University of Texas, said , referring to the publication that employs satire and fiction for its take on the news.

[...]

Kenneth Bunting, executive director of the National Freedom of Information Coalition, based at the University of Missouri School of Journalism, said, "I don't know whether we should give the university's attorney kudos for his insanely inventive nuance, or a swift kick in the rear for pushing the administration into an indefensible stance from which they must surely back down."

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