Digging into the inner workings of a college or university can be difficult, even when records are requested through a Freedom of Information Act request. As Michael Pope tells us, that’s because university presidents enjoy a license to operate outside of the scope of public scrutiny.
Remember all that controversy about the University of Virginia fund derided by some as a “slush fund?” That was one of the reasons Senator Chap Petersen wants to shine more sunlight on colleges and universities, removing an exemption that university presidents have for working papers and correspondence — in other words, public business conducted without public scrutiny.
“People have tried to get at why was there a tuition increase? What’s the basis for the tuition increase, and oftentimes you have to fight through a FOIA exemption to get at that information," says Petersen. "And this is not just private citizens. Sometimes this is campus newspapers, people like that.”
And it’s not just campus newspapers. Virginia Press Association director Betsey Edwards says newspapers and the public would benefit from more transparency.
“How decisions are made about tuition increases, how professors are hired. So when you have an exemption for working papers, it can cover a lot of things and sometimes you don’t know what you don’t know.”
Petersen has introduced similar legislation in the past. But Petersen says the controversy at UVA is creating a fresh sense of urgency to the issue.
