Student Newspaper Fires a Shot across EKU's Bow

Last Friday, the EKU student newspaper submitted a 50-page formal complaint to Attorney General Jack Conway alleging that the university violated state law when it withheld public information requested under the Freedom of Information Act.

Today, The Eastern Progress editor Marty Finley went public with his complaint.

His half-page editorial claimed that the "University is censoring the Progress." To punch up their point, in today's print edition, the word "censoring" is redacted in such a way as to possibly suggest any number of "___g" words that might be under cover. They also produced a new ad declaring: "The Eastern Progress: We're not Chicken!"

Finley told KSN&C that working with the university has actually been pretty good until recently. The change of attitude immediately followed a recent hazing story involving Kappa Alpha Psi, an EKU fraternity. The university suspended the fraternity while it investigated a claim that hazing sent a student to the hospital.

In April, the Progress pursued an open records request that produced only some of the requested documents; a number of them heavily redacted. University Counsel argued that the redactions were appropriate under Kentucky Revised Statute 61.878 and were intended to protect "personal privacy" such as addresses and ages (which the paper uses as distinguishing identifiers - to avoid misidentification of uninvolved parties). But Finley says "sometimes they redacted whole sections" of reports.

The law makes certain records exempt from inspection, such as,

"Public records containing information of a personal nature where the public disclosure thereof would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy...

This from The Eastern Progress:

"...We believe that some information is clearly private, such as credit card account numbers or social security numbers, but we feel addresses, ages and even phone numbers do not violate this statute.

Quite frankly, the statute does not list any of those as examples, but the university has chosen to use this as a blanket statement to keep this information secret.We think they couldn't be more wrong.

But the Progress did not blindly assume this. We contacted a Kentucky Press Association lawyer who specializes in media law. He was utterly dumbfounded by our story and suggested we contact the Attorney General for an official ruling.

While we have not heard back from the Attorney General as of press time, we feel withholding such information is a clear violation of open records law - the records should be given to us as free of redactions as possible." ...

KSN&C is seeking comment from the university regarding today's editorial.