Dive Brief:
- Auditors at the University of Florida found former General Counsel Jaime Keith "altered, destroyed or omitted" public records requested of the university which may have reflected poorly upon her, the Chronicle of Higher Education reports.
- Most of the records requests came from a local lawyer acting on behalf of a former football player who was accused, and acquitted, of sexual assault.
- U of F president W. Kent Fuchs has called for expanded public records training and enacted new guidance to help university officials better deal with such requests.
Dive Insight:
Lawsuits against universities over unfulfilled Freedom of Information Act requests are fairly frequent, and while, in most cases, they aren't enough to do serious damage to an institution, no college or university official wants to be charged in a court complaint. In most cases, the mishandling of FOIA requests is simply because university employees don't fully understand how they are to handle them, and often delayed processing is a capacity issue more than an attempt to withhold information.
Ensuring proper training and clear guidelines on the front end, including training around what can be legally withheld, can help address this. There should be a designated individual responsible for handling the requests so as not to distract from the daily tasks of others, and that individual should be completely clear on what he or she is obligated to release. It should also be clear that university documents should never be destroyed or in any way altered. In many cases, individuals requesting information are seeking something specific; a perceived cover-up could broaden the nature of the inquiry and lead to more trouble for the university.