University of Mary Washington Refuses to Produce Emergency Test Call Recording

University of Mary Washington's President Judy Hample placed an emergency test call during a campus safety walk to campus police last fall, but the university will not provide the recording of the call to The Free Lance-Star. The University contends the recording relates to a "criminal investigation" on the grounds that Hample's call would have been evidence in any criminal investigation, if there had been such an investigation. The University spokesman says no criminal investigation is on-going.

For more, click here.

Virginia Bill Would Add Another FOIA Exemption

A bill pending in the Virginia General Assembly seeks to exempt all records generated by campus threat assessment teams from the state's Freedom of Information Act.

The University of Virginia supports the legislation, saying it would allow teams to discuss potential threats to campus safety openly and would allow campus mental health providers and law enforcement officials to share confidential information.

Open government advocates disagree, cautioning the measure would make it more difficult to hold public officials accountable and identify any gaps in the campus security system if an incident were to occur.

Read more about the proposed bill here.

Private College Records May Well Be Public, Too...

Like cops in any major city, campus police officers at many private universities carry guns and can arrest people on the spot. But since they don't work for taxpayers, the public can't always delve into the records of what they do and where they do it.

But that may be changing.

At Yale University in New Haven, Conn., an attorney is successfully prying open personnel records of the campus police department. In Georgia, 2006 legislation opened up police records at private universities to public view. In Massachusetts, the legislature is considering a similar bill.

Crime records at private universities are "the last major issue in terms of getting access to crime information," says S. Daniel Carter, senior vice president of Security on Campus, Inc., in King of Prussia, Pa.

For their part, private universities say they are not public agencies and must act to protect the privacy of students and staff. But critics argue that public relations play at least as big a role. "For PR purposes, colleges want to perpetuate the impression that their campuses are crime-free enclaves," says Frank LoMonte, executive director of the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va., which supports college newspapers. "Honestly, no one believes that. Everyone believes that a campus with 20,000 or 30,000 young people on it is going to have some crime. It's not even an effective charade."

More here.