In 1966, President Lyndon B. Johnson signed the Freedom of Information Act into law. It requires all government agencies to provide copies of documents concerning “descriptions of its central and field organization,” “statements of the general course and method by which it functions” and “rules of procedure.”
To obtain records at OU, applicants must submit a written description of what they are seeking to the Open Records Office. The university’s single open records officer, Rachel McCombs, and her assistant then works to fulfill the request by coordinating with involved campus departments. If the documents exceed 30 pages, citizens are charged 25 cents a page.
According to the Oklahoma Open Records Act, 25 cents is the maximum amount that can be charged per page.
OU claims it costs 32 cents per page for labor, space, equipment and resources, but lowers the charge to 25 cents to comply with the state law.
Recently, The Daily discovered OU’s Open Records Office has been charging far more for requests than is necessary by law.
After examining numbers provided by the Office of Administration and Finance, it was discovered that it should only cost about 8 cents per page, meaning OU is charging triple the amount it actually costs to produce documents.
The Open Records Office has made more than $16,000 since its creation in 2007. We estimate OU should only charge 8 cents per page, meaning they have overcharged 17 cents per page. This results in a total of more than $11,000 in unnecessary charges for open records.
Having access to open records is important because they allow us to fact-check sources and accurately report on complex stories.
One project we’re looking into is the monastery in Arezzo, Italy, which the university purchased to create residence halls for students and faculty abroad.
OU President David Boren has repeatedly claimed Arezzo was purchased using donations and private funds. The Daily sent a request for information on purchasing the monastery in order to properly report on the topic.
For more than 16 weeks we have attempted to gather information regarding the purchase of the Arezzo monastery and have jumped through multiple hoops trying to obtain this information.
When we requested all information about the Arezzo monastery, the open records officer informed us our request produced over 4,000 documents and suggested we narrow our purposefully vague request. We chose to ask for every document regarding Arezzo because of the lack of information the administration has given.
The act is supposed to prevent such institutional barriers and allow easier access to government documents — the opposite of what occurs when we request documents.
The Daily is interested in finding out if public funds will be involved in the purchase of the monastery, even though the administration claims it was purchased with private funds, or how much the monestary will cost to maintain in the long term. When the university is cutting its budget due to inadequate state funding, we have to question any new purchase by the university to make sure it’s in the best interest of the students.
If we could access the documents available now, we could find out if that’s the case. The constant struggle just makes it seem like the university has something to hide.
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noonespecial 1 year, 1 month ago
'Our View' sound more like 'Harrison's View'...
Also, this is a very poorly written article. I would expect better from a group effort.
noonespecial 1 year, 1 month ago
"For more than 16 weeks we have attempted to gather information regarding the purchase of the Arezzo monastery and have jumped through multiple hoops trying to obtain this information.
When we requested all information about the Arezzo monastery, the open records officer informed us our request produced over 4,000 documents and suggested we narrow our purposefully vague request. We chose to ask for every document regarding Arezzo because of the lack of information the administration has given.
The act is supposed to prevent such institutional barriers and allow easier access to government documents — the opposite of what occurs when we request documents."
You do realize you just completely neutered your own argument right? 4,000 is a hell of a lot of documents. Either narrow your request and get the documents faster or keep your vague request and stop whining when it takes a while for them to fulfill it. Not a hard concept for a logical person to grasp.
"When the university is cutting its budget due to inadequate state funding, we have to question any new purchase by the university to make sure it’s in the best interest of the students."
Get off of your high horse. The Daily is a pretend newspaper so students can put it on their resume. You are not some kind of superior watchdog organization that does anything close to real journalism. Give it a rest already.
SoonerNation 1 year, 1 month ago
Well we already know that the Arezzo project is not completely sustained by private donations; the daily's earlier article about the Coca Cola contract showed that it wasn't.
The administration is either not aware of how exactly it's paying for this monastery or it is hiding something. Either way, incompetency and deviousness are both deplorable.
And lol @ noonespecial. You criticize the Daily for not being a serious newspaper and then condemn it when it tries to do actual investigative work. But your the logical one huh? With modern information systems there is no way it should take 16 weeks to meet the information request.
noonespecial 1 year, 1 month ago
@SoonerNation
I wasn't challenging the Daily to step up their game. I was telling them to learn their place. And FYI, "...our purposefully vague request" proves they are unable to even pretend to do actual investigative work.