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TRANSCRIPT
OU student journalist files lawsuit against
university for access to records
Paighten Harkins | Posted: Monday, May 13, 2013 6:35 pm
Editor’s Note: Joey Stipek and Nick Harrison are both former Daily employees.
An OU student journalist is suing President David Boren, along with the director of the Open Records
Office for denying him access to records he believes are public.
Joey Stipek, film and media studies senior, filed the lawsuit against Boren and Rachel McCombs after
they failed to provide him, and other student journalists, electronic copies or database information of
parking citations issued to students in the spring 2012 semester, according to the petition filed with the
Cleveland County Court on Friday.
When Stipek was working for The Daily in fall 2012, he filed a request for the records to see if there was
any preferential treatment given to individuals — namely student athletes — in regard to parking
tickets, Stipek’s attorney Nick Harrison said in a letter to Boren.
Stipek first requested copies of the tickets around Sept. 10. The records were given with no information
about the person or persons to whom the vehicles belonged, according to the petition.
Thus, Daily reporter Arianna Pickard requested the same information again, this time asking for the
names of the persons, around Sept. 21, according to the petition.
Around Oct. 1 Pickard’s records request was denied. McCombs said the information was protected
under the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA, meaning they were exempt from the
guidelines set by the Oklahoma Open Records Act, according to the petition.
FERPA is a federal law that protects students’ educational records, such as transcripts and demographic
information.
Stipek requested similar records twice more, on April 13 and April 17, getting denied each time,
according to the petition.
In denying the parking ticket requests, McCombs said the university considers that information to be an
education record protected under FERPA, according to Daily archives.
“Any record that contains information that is directly related to a student and is maintained by the
university is protected by FERPA,” McCombs said in an email, according to Daily archives.
However, because these records aren’t kept private — being left on the windshield of a student’s
vehicle where anyone can grab them — they aren’t confidential, said Frank LoMonte, Student Press Law
Center executive director, according to Daily archives.
“Would the college put your report card underneath your windshield wiper, or a copy of your
transcript?” he said.
As well, the tickets aren’t educational records because they are issued to cars, not students, he said.
A copy of Harrison’s letter was delivered to Boren on Monday. The petition was sent to Boren,
McCombs, OU Legal Counsel and the OU Board of Regents.
University of Oklahoma student journalist sues for
access to parking tickets
By Sara Gregory | Published 05/14/13 6:57pm | Email | Print | Reprint this story
OKLAHOMA — A University of Oklahoma student is suing for access to parking ticket records the school
says are protected by a federal education privacy law.
Last fall, Joey Stipek, then The Oklahoma Daily's online editor, requested a database of parking tickets
issued for the spring 2012 semester. He was given statistical information about the number of citations
issued and dismissed each year, but the records he was given didn't include identifiable information
about the vehicle registration.
Another Oklahoma Daily reporter then asked for citations as well as names of individuals to whom the
cars were registered. Rachel McCombs, the school's open records director, denied their request in
October, saying the records were protected under FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
Later, when they asked for non-student parking tickets, the university said it was technologically unable
to comply.
Stipek, who will be interning at the Student Press Law Center in the fall, filed his lawsuit Friday after
months of discussions with the university. Given the university's repeated denials, a lawsuit is "the only
way" to get the records, said attorney Nick Harrison, an Oklahoma Daily alumnus who is representing
Stipek.
"Administrators try to sit and wait it out until students graduate or lose interest," Harrison said. "They
don't think they have to follow the law."
Harrison said Stipek requested the records because he was curious to see whether athletes or others at
the university received preferential treatment when it came to parking tickets.
"He wanted to know which ones are dismissed and why?" Harrison said.
Harrison believes the case is very straightforward, and noted that courts in Maryland and North Carolina
have said parking tickets are not protected under FERPA. In 2011, a judge ordered the University of
North Carolina at Chapel Hill to release parking tickets, writing that "FERPA does not provide a student
with an invisible cloak so that the student can remain hidden from public view while enrolled."
If the university believes they are protected under FERPA, Harrison said he questions why "they leave
these on windshield wipers all over campus."
A university spokeswoman said the school had no comment beyond a letter to the editor written by
Parking and Transportation Services Director Douglas Myers that was published in The Oklahoma Daily
in March.
"The university is bound to comply with current federal guidance," Myers wrote. "Should that guidance
change, the university will adopt policies that include the disclosure of student information alongside
that already available for faculty, staff and others."
Education records that "directly relate" to a student and that are "maintained" by the university are
confidential under FERPA. At issue at the University of Oklahoma is whether parking citations are
education records.
Journalists in Oklahoma and elsewhere have argued the citations are not education records because
they are issued to a car and not an individual. Myers told the Daily in March that the university's
database was not able to differentiate between citations issued to students and non-students.
McCombs and University of Oklahoma President David Boren are named in the suit, filed in the district
court of Cleveland County.
Contact Gregory by email or at (703) 807-1904 ext. 125.
Student journalist sues OU for access to parking
ticket information
Posted on 14 May, 2013 by oklahomafoi — Leave a reply
The University of Oklahoma’s claim that parking tickets issued to students are private educational
records is being challenged in court by a former online editor for The Oklahoma Daily.
Joey Stipek is asking a Cleveland County judge to order OU officials to release all parking citations issued
by the university.
Stipek’s lawsuit, filed Friday, stems from OU’s refusal to release electronic copies of parking citations
issued to students in the spring 2012 semester. OU’s open records officer, Rachel McCombs, claimed the
information is confidential under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA,
according to Stipek’s lawsuit.
OU and Oklahoma State University officials have made that claim for years even though courts in other
states have ruled otherwise.
In 1998, for example, the Maryland Court of Appeals unanimously ruled that FERPA “was not intended
to preclude the release of any record simply because the record contained the name of a student.”
(Kirwan v. The Diamondback, 721 A.2d 196, 27 Media L. Rep. 1399 (Md. Ct. App. 1998))
The court reasoned:
The federal statute was obviously intended to keep private those aspects of a student’s
educational life that relate to academic matters or status as a student.
Nevertheless, in addition to protecting the privacy of students, Congress intended to prevent
educational institutions from operating in secrecy.
Prohibiting disclosure of any document containing a student’s name would allow universities to
operate in secret, which would be contrary to one of the policies behind the Family Educational
Rights and Privacy Act.
Universities could refuse to release information about criminal activity on campus if students
were involved, claiming that this information constituted education records, thus keeping very
important information from other students, their parents, public officials, and the public.
We hold that “education records” within the meaning of the Family Educational Rights and
Privacy Act do not include records of parking tickets or correspondence between the NCAA and
the University regarding a student-athlete accepting a loan to pay parking tickets.
The university’s student newspaper had sought the records after learning that a basketball player had
nearly 300 parking violations, many for parking in handicapped spaces, and more than $8,000 in unpaid
parking fines.
In 2011, a North Carolina judge ruled that parking tickets issued to UNC athletes “are not education
records protected by FERPA.”
The “remote possibility” that repeated parking violations would result in disciplinary action “does not
constitute a sufficient ‘threat’ to cloak every student with invisibility about the number of parking tickets
he or she receives,” the judge said.
(Similarly, the judge ruled that student phone numbers on UNC coaches’ cell phone bills were public
records, saying: “FERPA does not provide a student with an invisible cloak so that the student can
remain hidden from public view while enrolled at UNC. The telephone number is not part of the
education record protected by FERPA.”)
The N.C. judge’s ruling was another example of courts telling universities that “FERPA is not to be
applied in an absurd way to conceal information that is not educational,” said Frank LoMonte, executive
director of the Student Press Law Center.
LoMonte recently said OSU officials shouldn’t just ignore those court rulings and should stop “relying on
this unsustainable interpretation of FERPA that is inconsistent with the way other people read it and
undermines the public interest.”
If parking tickets are indeed educational records, LoMonte told The Daily O’Collegian, then the
university is violating FERPA by placing them on windshields in public view.
“They certainly wouldn’t take your report card and stick it under your windshield wiper and leave it on
public display for anyone to see,” LoMonte said.
Stipek had sought OU’s parking tickets to determine if preferential treatment had been given to anyone,
especially athletes.
After being denied access, Stipek asked for all non-student parking citations. But the university replied
that it didn’t have the technological capability to redact student information from the database,
according to his petition.
Stipek’s lawsuit was filed against McCombs and OU President David Boren. Stipek’s attorney is Nicholas
Harrison, who received FOI Oklahoma’s 2012 Ben Blackstock Award because of his reporting for The
Oklahoma Daily as a University of Oklahoma law school student.
Joey Senat, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
OSU School of Media & Strategic Communications
Former OU Daily Editor Files Lawsuit Against
University of Oklahoma Over Student Parking
Tickets
Posted by Dan Reimold on Wednesday, May 15, 2013 · Leave a Comment
A former Oklahoma Daily online editor is suing the University of Oklahoma to gain access to student
parking ticket records.
Joey Stipek, an OU senior, filed the lawsuit Friday against university president David Boren and Open
Records Office director Rachel McCombs. The suit alleges the school has repeatedly, and illegally,
rebuffed his efforts to acquire “records he believes are public”– and potentially newsworthy.
As he wrote in March, “OU gave out almost 52,000 parking citations last year, then dismissed almost a
third of them. But you won’t find out here whether athletes, student leaders, faculty or any other
special interest group got special treatment. The reason? OU won’t release the records.”
Why the lawsuit specifically? Stipek’s attorney Nick Harrison, also a former OU Daily staffer, tells the
Student Press Law Center it is partially to keep the university honest. In his words, “Administrators try to
sit and wait it out until students graduate or lose interest. They don’t think they have to follow the law.”
The university is citing the privacy monster FERPA (the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act) as the
backbone behind its decision to not release the ticket info.
In a letter to the Daily this spring, the school’s director of parking and transportation services noted “the
university has provided information on locations of tickets given and statistics regarding the numbers of
tickets issued . . . [as well as] information related to any non-student ticket recipient, including faculty,
staff or university guests to whom the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act does not apply.” (Stipek
denies the latter claim in his lawsuit, saying the university told him it did not possess “the technological
capabilities” to separate students from non-students in its tickets database.)
Bottom line, for now, from OU’s view, student tickets are exempt from public scrutiny.
How truly private are parking tickets though, given their actual targets and method of distribution? In
March, SPLC executive director Frank LoMonte told the Daily, “Tickets are issued to cars, not people.
The ticket is not a record belonging to and directly relating to the student. . . . A parking ticket is left
stuck on the window of a car where passing pedestrians can look at it. Would the college put your
report card underneath your windshield wiper, or a copy of your transcript?“
At least one superior court judge in North Carolina also finds the FERPA foundation shaky when it comes
to student parking violations. In a spring 2011 ruling related to a parking tickets access lawsuit filed by
UNC’s Daily Tar Heel and other media, judge Howard Manning voiced his support for transparency. As
he wrote at the time, “FERPA does not provide a student with an invisible cloak so that the student can
remain hidden from public view.”
In a related sense, the Daily has been waging a larger transparency fight since last fall– filing lots of
public records requests and even keeping a running tally on its website.
As top staff explained in an editorial in November, “The average citizen won’t often check a committee’s
minutes or a politician’s phone records, but these freedoms allow the press to do it for you and to
engage in the reporting that uncovers and stops abuses of power. . . . So from now on, we’ll be
watching. We’ll be filing more requests for access to significant records so we can fulfill our role by give
you the information you need to intelligently wield your political power.”
The most recent request, submitted by the paper yesterday, is for a rundown of all lawsuits filed against
university leadership in the past five years. The stated rationale is “to get a better perspective on what
this most recent lawsuit means for OU.”
Student journalist sues school for parking ticket
records
By Dan Reimold May 17, 2013 5:40 pm
A former online editor of The Oklahoma Daily student newspaper is suing the University of Oklahoma to
gain access to student parking ticket records.
Joey Stipek, an OU senior, filed the lawsuit against university president David Boren and Open Records
Office director Rachel McCombs. The suit alleges the school has repeatedly, and illegally, rebuffed his
efforts to acquire “records he believes are public” — and potentially newsworthy.
As he wrote in March, “OU gave out almost 52,000 parking citations last year, then dismissed almost a
third of them. But you won’t find out here whether athletes, student leaders, faculty or any other
special interest group got special treatment. The reason? OU won’t release the records.”
Why the lawsuit specifically? Stipek’s attorney Nick Harrison, also a former OU Daily staffer, tells the
Student Press Law Center it is partially to keep the university honest. In his words, “Administrators try to
sit and wait it out until students graduate or lose interest. They don’t think they have to follow the law.”
The university is citing FERPA (the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act) — a law protecting student
privacy — as the backbone behind its decision to not release the ticket records.
In a letter to the Daily this spring, the school’s director of parking and transportation services noted “the
university has provided information on locations of tickets given and statistics regarding the numbers of
tickets issued … [as well as] information related to any non-student ticket recipient, including faculty,
staff or university guests to whom the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act does not apply.” (Stipek
denies the latter claim in his lawsuit, saying the university told him it did not possess “the technological
capabilities” to separate students from non-students in its tickets database.)
Bottom line, for now, from OU’s view: Student tickets are exempt from public scrutiny.
How truly private are parking tickets though, given their actual targets and method of distribution?
In March, SPLC executive director Frank LoMonte told the Daily, “Tickets are issued to cars, not people.
The ticket is not a record belonging to and directly relating to the student … A parking ticket is left stuck
on the window of a car where passing pedestrians can look at it. Would the college put your report card
underneath your windshield wiper, or a copy of your transcript?”
At least one superior court judge in North Carolina also finds the FERPA foundation shaky when it comes
to student parking violations. In a spring 2011 ruling related to a parking tickets access lawsuit filed by
student and local media outlets, judge Howard Manning voiced his support for transparency. As he
wrote at the time, “FERPA does not provide a student with an invisible cloak so that the student can
remain hidden from public view.”
In a related sense, the Daily has been waging a larger transparency fight since last fall — filing lots of
public records requests and even keeping a running tally on its website.
As the editorial board explained in an editorial in November, “The average citizen won’t often check a
committee’s minutes or a politician’s phone records, but these freedoms allow the press to do it for you
and to engage in the reporting that uncovers and stops abuses of power … So from now on, we’ll be
watching. We’ll be filing more requests for access to significant records so we can fulfill our role by give
you the information you need to intelligently wield your political power.”
The most recent request submitted by the paper is for a rundown of all lawsuits filed against university
leadership in the past five years. The stated rationale is “to get a better perspective on what this most
recent lawsuit means for OU.”
Dan Reimold, Ph.D., is a college journalism scholar who has written and presented about the student
press throughout the U.S. and in Southeast Asia. He is an assistant professor of journalism at the
University of Tampa, where he also advises The Minaret student newspaper. He maintains the student
journalism industry blog College Media Matters. A complete list of Campus Beat articles is here.
New motions filed in university suit
By Jessica Bruha, The Norman Transcript Jul 2, 2013
New motions were filed last week in a case involving a lawsuit filed against the University of Oklahoma
in May, according to plaintiff Joey Stipek.
Stipek, OU film and media studies senior and former online editor of The Oklahoma Daily, filed the
lawsuit after the university repeatedly refused to release student parking citation information to him
and other employees of the student newspaper.
Stipek said new motions filed Friday included a response to the defendants’ motion to dismiss and a
motion for summary judgment. In the response, Stipek requested the court to deny the defendants’
motion to dismiss, which was filed June 3, court records show.
The lawsuit was filed specifically against David Boren, president of OU, and Rachel McCombs, director of
the Open Records Office at OU.
The response states that in recent years, reporters at other student newspapers have requested campus
parking citations under their state’s Open Records laws after receiving tips that student athletes were
receiving special treatment. Stipek was attempting to write a similar story when he was denied access to
the records.
Stipek was told they were protected by the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA), the
document states.
OU officials have previously stated that since student parking citations are protected by FERPA, they are
exempt from disclosure under the Oklahoma Open Records Act.
Since the records are directly related to a student and maintained by the university, they can’t be
disclosed under FERPA. This sets them apart from law enforcement records, which are required to be
disclosed to the public, the officials said.
However, OU officials said they have provided and will continue to provide information related to any
non-student ticket recipient, including faculty staff or university guests to whom FERPA does not apply.
Officials further stated they have already provided parking ticket information about Boren and other
university officials. Also, the ticketing system is an administrative function, not a criminal one, the
university said.
“This is the same argument which was also asserted unsuccessfully by school officials at the University
of Maryland in 1998 and the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill in 2011,” Stipek’s attorney, Nick
Harrison, said in a response document.
In the response, Harrison said the plaintiff, Stipek, asserts the following:
· The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act does not apply to campus parking citations and the
University of Oklahoma is required to divulge all of its records under the Oklahoma Open Records Act.
· In the alternative, even if some information is protected by FERPA, the burden falls upon the University
of Oklahoma to redact the protected information and the defendants cannot plead inadequacies in the
filing systems they created and maintained to avoid their obligations to produce public records under
the law.
Summary judgment: The motion for summary judgment was submitted with the response. In the
summary, Harrison argued against some of the items listed in the defendants’ motion to dismiss the
case.
· Naming a Proper Defendant: The defendants’ document says that the action should be dismissed on
technical grounds because the plaintiff did not name a proper defendant in his pleadings.
Harrison stated in the summary judgment that the defendants failed to provide sufficient grounds to
prevail under the standard for a motion to dismiss. He also said the plaintiff has named the appropriate
parties and a dismissal is not warranted, even if OU should have been named as a defendant.
· Provisions of the Oklahoma Open Records Act: The motion to dismiss says the defendants complied
with their obligations under the law and provided all of the required documents under the provisions of
the Oklahoma Open Records Act.
The summary judgment says the plaintiff is entitled to the requested records under the provisions of the
Oklahoma Open Records Act, further stating OU only cited FERPA and it does not apply to the plaintiff’s
request.
Even if some of the requested records must be withheld, the burden is on OU to maintain those records
in a fashion that allows them to redact the protected information and release the rest, the summary
states.
· Sovereign Immunity: The summary also states that the defendants cannot claim sovereign immunity
unless they have can point to a specific statutory basis for it.
“In their motion to dismiss, they failed to cite a legitimate statutory basis, alluding only to the Oklahoma
Governmental Tort Claims Act,” the document states.
The document continues to state why the action does not qualify as a tort but rather a writ of
mandamus.
· Writ of mandamus: The summary further states the defendants have a valid point that an affidavit is
required for the writ of mandamus, so the affidavit was filed with the response and the “procedural flaw
no longer exists.”
Plaintiff requests: In conclusion to the summary judgment, the document says the plaintiff asks that the
court issue a writ of mandamus compelling the defendants to release the records described in the
plaintiff’s demand letter dated May 8. The demand letter has been submitted as evidence, Stipek said.
The plaintiff also requests that the court award costs and fees and all such other relief as the court
deems proper, the summary judgment states.
Student speaks out about university lawsuit
By Jessica Bruha, The Norman Transcript Aug 2, 2013
“The lawsuit is the last thing we wanted to do. If they said they would give us the records now, we
would settle out of court. I’d drop the lawsuit.”
Those were the words of University of Oklahoma student Joey Stipek earlier this week, talking about the
lawsuit he filed against the university’s president, David Boren.
Stipek, also the former online editor of The Oklahoma Daily, filed a lawsuit in May after the university
refused to release parking citation information for him and other student newspaper employees.
The students were told the information was protected by the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act
(FERPA) and are exempt from disclosure under the Oklahoma Open Records Act.
Stipek said when they were requesting the information during one project, they requested it from
several different Oklahoma colleges. Parking tickets for the school president, an athletic coach and a
journalism professor were requested at many of the schools.
“They’re all state employees,” he said.
The students made their requests at the University of Oklahoma, Oklahoma State University, University
of Central Oklahoma, Oklahoma Christian University and Oklahoma City Community College.
At OU, Stipek said he received an email saying they would be happy to turn over any parking tickets and
gave them a journalism professor’s. Stipek was told Boren and football coach Bob Stoops didn’t have
any tickets.
At OSU, he said they only received the information requested for football coach Mike Gundy. At OCU, no
information was given to them as they cited FERPA and the Oklahoma Records Act. At UCO, he said they
could not turn the records over due to “confidentiality reasons,” not citing FERPA or the Open Records
Act.
All parking citation information was made available at OCCC. Stipek said the community college told him
those records are not FERPA records and as long as he had media credentials, he could go in and inspect
the parking citations.
“This one college, where there’s none of these special interests, said these (records) aren’t protected by
FERPA,” he said.
Stipek said he doesn’t want people to think he’s out to get Bob Stoops, but he does want to know if
people are receiving special treatment.
“Another misconception about this is that we’re targeting athletes, specifically football players, and
that’s the furthest thing from the truth,” he said.
Stipek said he was told by other students and OU employees that student government and VIP
administrators were the ones receiving special treatment.
“I feel like Open Records requests just means that you’re participating in informed citizenry, and that’s a
good thing — asking questions and wondering where your money goes and who’s receiving special
treatment,” Stipek said, adding apparently the OU community disagrees.
Boren said they are complying with federal law when they do not turn over information relating to
students.
“I personally am sympathetic with releasing all parking ticket information. The university already
releases information in regard to myself and other individual officers, faculty and staff of the university,”
Boren said. “We are required to comply with federal law, which prohibits us from releasing information
of this kind which relates to students.”
The university has said before that since the records are directly related to a student and maintained by
the university, they can’t be disclosed under FERPA. This sets them apart from law enforcement records,
which are required to be disclosed to the public, university officials said. In addition, the ticketing system
is an administrative function, not a criminal one.
University officials also said they already have provided parking ticket information about Boren and
other university officials.
Boren added that if the federal law is changed either by congressional or judicial action, the university
would comply with the law.
Stipek said the whole case is built on precedence. There have been judges in North Carolina and
Maryland rule that the same records are not protected by FERPA, he said.
“It’s not some Harry Potter invisibility cloak,” he said. “Personally, if I were a taxpayer, I’d be kind of
embarrassed of their citing of this law for these things when there’s enough legal precedence that
proves otherwise.”
Stipek said he hopes other students feel inspired by his actions and will want to get involved in Open
Records and “ask the hard questions that are part of the fabric of journalism.”
“That was the big reason why I did the project. Hopefully someone will take notice at OU and be inspired
and follow my lead,” he said.
As for the lawsuit, Stipek is awaiting his Aug. 26 court date over the matter in Cleveland County District
Court.
University of Oklahoma parking tickets lawsuit
moved to federal court
By Samantha Vicent | Published 10/21/13 6:20pm | Email | Print | Reprint this story
OKLAHOMA — A journalist at the University of Oklahoma’s student newspaper who sued his school
seeking access to parking ticket records says he will challenge the school’s attempt to move the case to
federal court.
Joey Stipek, a special projects reporter at The Oklahoma Daily, filed a lawsuit in May against University
of Oklahoma President David Boren and open records office director Rachel McCombs after officials
repeatedly refused to provide him with information about parking tickets issued during the spring 2012
semester, saying the records were protected by FERPA, the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act.
That case was dismissed in August after a judge determined Stipek should have filed the suit against the
University of Oklahoma rather than naming Boren and McCombs individually. Nicholas Harrison, Stipek’s
attorney, re-filed the suit on Stipek’s behalf in September.
Now, the University of Oklahoma has filed a motion to have the case heard by federal, not state, courts,
saying that it involves a question of how FERPA is applied, despite Harrison’s assertion that the issue at
hand is the university’s compliance with the state’s Open Records Act. After the case was removed to
federal courts, the school also filed a motion to dismiss the case entirely.
“Most state entities really don’t like to be in federal court. It’s sort of a rarity for state institutions to try
to move these things to federal court,” Harrison said. “A concern out there is they’re trying to deprive
my client of counsel.”
Harrison, a presidential business fellow for the U.S. Department of Personnel Management’s Small
Business Administration, questioned the school’s motive in removing the case from state court. U.S. law
states federal employees would be unable to represent private clients in a federal court case that
involves a federal matter of “substantial” interest.
Harrison must also be admitted to practice before the U.S. District Court for the Western District of
Oklahoma and register to enter electronic case filings by Nov. 15 or he will be unable to represent
Stipek.
Michael Nash, a spokesman for the University of Oklahoma, said the school does not comment on
pending litigation.
Stipek and Harrison said they respected but disagreed with the lower court’s decision to dismiss the
original lawsuit, and they will attempt to get the proceedings remanded to Cleveland County.
Most lawsuits involving public records disputes and FERPA have been tried in state courts. In 2012, the
7th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals vacated a lower court’s decision in a public records case involving
FERPA and the University of Illinois. In that case, brought by The Chicago Tribune, the appeals court said
the lawsuit needed to be resolved in state courts “because the Tribune’s claim to the information arises
under Illinois law.”
It will be “several months” before a judge makes any decisions in the federal case, but Harrison said that
won’t stop his client from trying to get the information he wants.
“Ultimately, we want the parking citations released,” Harrison said. “Whether it comes out in federal
court or state court, that’s not a big deal. I want the University of Oklahoma to comply with the law and
release the parking tickets.”
By Samantha Vicent, SPLC staff writer. Contact Vicent by email or at (703) 807-1904 ext. 126.
OU cites FERPA for moving parking ticket lawsuit
to federal court
Posted on 19 October, 2013 by oklahomafoi — Leave a reply
A University of Oklahoma student who has sued for access to parking citations issued by OU said he will
challenge the school’s move of the Open Records Act lawsuit to federal court.
Joey Stipek believes OU is attempting to disqualify his attorney, Nick Harrison, who is a Presidential
Management Fellow with the Small Business Administration.
U.S. law prohibits federal employees from representing clients before a federal court in a matter that
involves a substantial federal interest.
In OU’s petition, the university argued that Stipek’s claim under the state Open Records Act depends
upon the interpretation and application of the federal Family Educational Rights & Privacy Act (FERPA)
and, therefore, involves a “substantial question of federal law.”
OU has refused to release electronic copies of parking citations issued to students, claiming the
information is confidential under FERPA.
Harrison does not believe OU’s reason for moving the case is applicable.
“A case can be removed [from state court] where there’s a federal law that’s part of the plaintiff’s
original cause of action,” said Harrison. “However, a federal law that the defendant is using as a defense
doesn’t qualify.”
He said contesting the change of courts is “a lengthy process.”
“It buys them a few more months, and they still haven’t filed a substantive response to Joey Stipek’s
claims,” said Harrison.
FOI Oklahoma presented Harrison with its 2012 Ben Blackstock Award because of his reporting for The
Oklahoma Daily as a University of Oklahoma law school student. Harrison also served as an airborne
paratrooper in Alaska and completed two combat tours in Afghanistan and Kuwait.
Joey Senat, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
OSU School of Media & Strategic Communications
OU student sues school over refusal to release
parking-ticket records
By CURTIS KILLMAN World Staff Writer | 7 comments
What started out as a curiosity about whether certain students received favorable treatment on parking
tickets has evolved into a legal battle pitting the state Open Records Act against federal privacy law
concerns and a student against the university he attends.
Joey Stipek sued the University of Oklahoma earlier this year after administration officials refused to
make public an electronic database the school maintained of parking tickets issued by its personnel.
"I just wanted to see if favoritism was going on," said Stipek, 32, an OU student and former online editor
for the student newspaper, The Oklahoma Daily.
The interest started in 2012, when Stipek said he and others had heard anecdotal reports of some
students having their parking tickets dismissed by school personnel.
But a series of requests for citation data by Stipek and others at the student paper resulted each time in
the university refusing to release parking ticket records that might identify individual students.
The university even refused to make public a request for individual parking tickets issued to all non-
students, saying the records were kept in such a way that prevented them from being segregated from
those issued to students, court records associated with the lawsuit state.
In its defense for not releasing the records, university officials cited the federal Family Educational Rights
and Privacy Act.
The federal law, known as FERPA, generally prohibits the improper disclosure of personally identifiable
information derived from education records.
Schools that violate FERPA restrictions jeopardize their continued receipt of federal funding, OU states
in court records.
An OU spokeswoman declined Tuesday to comment on the lawsuit, saying its stance in the case could be
found in public filings associated with the lawsuit.
Court filings in the lawsuit indicate OU contends any filings maintained by the university that relate to a
student are protected from disclosure by FERPA.
"The factual allegations in the petition give rise to the statutory interpretation of (FERPA), including the
redaction and/or release of personally identifiable information regarding students of the university," OU
claims in court filings.
Stipek's attorney, Nick Harrison, said in similar cases at other universities, school personnel released
parking citation records to the requestors.
Harrison said he could only find two lawsuits involving the release of parking citation data. In both cases,
universities that initially refused to release the records lost in state court battles, he said.
Meanwhile, lawyers for the university earlier this month sought to have the case moved from state
court in Cleveland County to federal court in Oklahoma City.
Harrison said he believes the request to move the case to federal court is an attempt to have him
removed as an attorney from the case.
Harrison said since he filed the lawsuit on behalf of Stipek, he has taken a job working for a federal
agency in Washington, D.C.
Harrison said he is reviewing federal ethics rules to see if they prevent him from representing Stipek if
the case remains in federal jurisdiction. In the meantime, Harrison said he plans to oppose OU's attempt
to move the case to federal court.
"Really the only reason they want to move it over to federal court is to try to get me taken off the case
and deprive Joey of counsel," he said.
Harrison said he took the case on a contingency basis and it may be difficult for Stipek to find another
attorney if he has to step aside.
An expert on public records disclosure requirements said he believes the attempt to move the case to
federal court is a delaying tactic.
"OU is working awfully hard to keep this information from the public," said Joey Senat, a board member
of FOI Oklahoma Inc. and associate professor of journalism at Oklahoma State University.
Curtis Killman 918-581-8471
‘This is not a question of can’t. It’s a question of
won’t’
Joey Stipek, For the Daily | 0 comments
Colleges and universities in Oklahoma give inconsistent reasons for releasing student parking tickets.
That’s because of neither OU, Oklahoma State University or the University of Central Oklahoma will
release the names of students issued parking tickets, saying their names are educational records
protected under the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act and that the Oklahoma Open Records Act
allows them to release student names.
Parking tickets provide a $2 million-revenue stream to Oklahoma’s four largest colleges and universities,
but so far it’s been impossible to learn which students are getting those tickets, how much each of them
are paying in fines and whether any students are getting preferential treatment at three of those
schools.
Though most individual tickets amount to $3 to $100 depending on the college or university, the lack of
transparency raises concerns in some quarters, especially considering past precedent for such behavior.
“Schools have withheld tickets because they knew the tickets would show that athletes were getting
preferential treatment or were driving suspiciously expensive cars,” said Frank LoMonte, executive
director of the Student Press Law Center in Washington. “So it is a fair suspicion that the Oklahoma
colleges are fearful of that type of scandal coming to light on their campuses.”
LoMonte cited two examples in Maryland and North Carolina. In 2011, students at the University of
North Carolina sued the university for access to student parking tickets and were joined by outside
media, including the Raleigh News & Observer, the Charlotte Observer, the Associated Press and
broadcast outlets.
The parking ticket disclosures along with other records showed an ongoing investigation into academic
and athletic misconduct at the university. Holden Thorp, University of North Carolina chancellor, fired
football coach Butch Davis in July 2011 in the midst of an NCAA investigation.
Several players lost their eligibility after the NCAA found they had improperly accepted benefits from
sports agents. Those North Carolina students seeking parking tickets were following the examples of
student journalists at the University of Maryland, who in the 1990s unearthed a parking ticket fixing
scandal involving student athletes.
In Oklahoma, the process is playing out differently. I’m seeking parking ticket records by suing OU with
the help of two attorneys working pro bono on his behalf.
The attorneys are Nicholas Harrison, an OU alumnus based in Washington D.C. and another lawyer,
Kevin Taylor, based in Oklahoma City.
Unlike in North Carolina, no other media has joined my lawsuit seeking access to the parking tickets.
Harrison said other media outlets haven't joined the case for two reasons.
“We put out some feelers, but we didn't get any interest,” Harrison said. "Money was also a big
consideration. Other plaintiffs might have wanted to sue other schools. And, it's best to take on one
Goliath at a time."
The case is pending in Oklahoma federal court. The move from a state to a federal court was granted
OU’s request.
While the case is pending, I continued to gather what information I could regarding the parking tickets.
The three schools maintain FERPA and the Oklahoma Open Records Act allow them to withhold student
parking ticket information. The schools would give out parking ticket records for university
administrators, faculty and staff.
No one disputes students are entitled to privacy regarding their education records, such as transcripts,
GPA, grades, social security number and academic evaluations.
But parking tickets are typically public records.
“It's completely possible to disclose student parking tickets without violating FERPA, since such
disclosures take place all the time, harmlessly,” LoMonte said.
Some records have been made available and I was able to learn the following:
OU generated nearly $862,000 from a total of 57,478 parking tickets issued in 2013, with 7,740 — or
13.4 percent — dismissed. There are 22,254 students enrolled at OU.
OSU took in more than $750,000 from a total of 40,261 parking tickets issued in 2013, with 1,532 — or
4 percent — dismissed. There are 23,861 students enrolled at OSU.
UCO generated nearly $420,000 from a total of 29,752 parking tickets that were issued in 2013, with
1,426 — or 4 percent — dismissed. Total enrollment at UCO is 15,844 students.
Oklahoma City Community College took in just over $7,200 from a total of 631 parking tickets issued
in 2013, with 110 tickets — or 16.6 percent — dismissed. Total enrollment at OCCC is 11,600 students.
Records requested
The parking ticket records requested from these schools were made over a two-month period in
November and December 2013, These requests included information about electronic parking citations
for the university or college president, athletic coach, student newspaper adviser and students over a
four-year period.
Staff and faculty parking tickets are considered open records, The Daily requested and received parking
ticket records from the following: OU President David Boren, football head coach Bob Stoops and
journalism professor Christopher Krug.
Both Boren and Stoops received no tickets during the time period requested. Krug received several
tickets during the time period requested.
However, OU’s Open Records Office does not release student parking ticket records. OU’s general
counsel cites both FERPA and the Oklahoma Open Records Act as reasons to withhold student parking
tickets.
At OSU the request sought the parking tickets of OSU President Burns Hargis; head football coach Mike
Gundy; Barbara Allen, the Daily O’Collegian student newspaper adviser and students.
Gary Shutt, director of communications at OSU, said Allen received no tickets issued during the time
period. Shutt said both Hargis and Gundy had tickets issued and some were dismissed. Gundy received
two warnings, and two out of nine of Gundy’s tickets were dismissed.
“Gundy had a valid permit at the time but did not move it to the vehicle he was driving. Our permits may
be transferred from one vehicle to another. It is common practice to void this citation or reduce it to $5
for failure to display the ticket,” Shutt said. Hargis received one ticket during this period and his ticket
was dismissed. Shutt said Hargis was on university business and should not have been ticketed.
While information on faculty and staff parking tickets were given promptly, OSU officials declined to
release student tickets, citing FERPA and the Oklahoma Open Records Act section 24A.16.
Section 24A.16 is known as the Confidential Records of Public Educational Institutions citation, which
allows public universities allows universities to release certain information. Shutt offered to turn over
student tickets if those students would agree to their release.
Otherwise, Shutt said, “We clearly believe Oklahoma law allows us discretion to keep confidential
individual student records.”
The request at UCO sought the parking tickets of UCO President Don Betz; head football coach Nick
Bobeck; Ted Burch, The Vista student newspaper adviser, and students.
Betz received no tickets issued during the time period. Burch had one ticket issued and dismissed.
Bobeck had three tickets issued and dismissed. Raul Martinez, director of transportation at UCO, said
Burch appealed the citation, and the university’s parking appeals board waived it. In Bobeck’s case,
Martinez said the provider that issued Bobeck’s one-day parking pass inadvertently left off the
expiration date.
“Ticket was waived since error was through no fault of Mr. Bobeck,” Martinez said.
Bobeck’s other two tickets were invalid because they were given during a grace period after a glitch in
the parking decal ordering system prevented customers from order decals for a few days, Martinez said.
While faculty and staff parking tickets were given promptly, Elizabeth Kerr, legal counsel for UCO,
declined to release student tickets. Kerr cited FERPA and the Oklahoma Open Records Act section
24A.16 as reasons to deny the request.
“Under FERPA, an institution may release directory information,” Kerr said. “Under the Oklahoma Open
Records law, the institution shall release directory information. In both (cases), directory information is
clearly defined. Traffic tickets are not included in the definition."
OCCC officials said they honor requests to inspect student parking tickets. Records are available for
inspection during business hours, OCCC spokesman Cordell Jordan said.
OCCC files parking citations in a file cabinet, not in an electronic database. Jordan said citations are
tracked through an electronic database.
“[That] is why we can quickly look at the number of citations but do not know specifics about them
without looking at each ticket,” Jordan said. Reasons for ticket dismissals are not available because of
ARMS — the system OCCC uses to track parking tickets — does not list the reason for voided parking
tickets.
The request at OCCC sought parking tickets of OCCC President Paul Sechrist; Eric Watson, sports and
recreation specialist; Ronna Austin, the Pioneer student newspaper lab instructor and students.
‘This is not a question of can’t. It’s a question of won’t’
OSU and UCO officials gave several different responses when they learned student parking tickets at
OCCC are considered open records.
OSU’s stance on the release of student parking tickets did not change. Shutt said information on student
parking tickets is without a doubt a student record, citing the Open Records Act.
“OSU enforces those [parking tickets] through the Bursar system — they are educational records and, in
our opinion, also FERPA records,” Shutt said. “Even if you remove FERPA and educational records from
the equation, OSU believes student’s tickets are individual records covered under the state’s Open
Records Act.”
Kerr’s said UCO already responded to the open records request.
LoMonte said each college or university I sought records from were public entities supported by
taxpayers. The difference between them is that OCCC releases information about student parking tickets
without receiving sanctions from the federal government under FERPA.
“This is not a question of can't. It's a question of won't,” LoMonte said. “These colleges (that refuse to
provide ticket information) are simply manipulating and abusing FERPA to serve illegitimate purposes of
concealment, which raises real questions about what must be revealed by those tickets.”
Currently the Oklahoma Attorney General doesn’t have an opinion on whether tickets are protected by
Oklahoma Open Records Act, said Diane Clay, spokeswoman for Oklahoma Attorney General Scott
Pruitt.
Joey Senat, an Oklahoma State University journalism professor and former FOI Oklahoma president, said
the bottom line is universities aren’t going to provide student parking tickets unless they are forced.
FOI Oklahoma is a statewide organization actively supporting those organizations and individuals
working to get open records or provide access to meetings that might otherwise be closed.
If universities can’t cite a case with an Attorney General opinion for closing records, then there’s no
reason to keep the records closed, Senat said.
“It’s a disingenuous excuse,” Senat said.
Rep. Jason Murphey, R-Guthrie, was the winner of the 2011 FOI Oklahoma’s sunshine award.
Murphey said the spirit of the law says the parking ticket records should be open.
“It’s mighty frustrating that the current law isn’t being adhered to. This might be where the legislators
step in,” Murphey said.
Federal judge says ‘plausible’ that university
parking tickets are not education records under
FERPA
Posted on 14 May, 2014 by oklahomafoi — 1 Comment ↓
A federal judge in Oklahoma City refused Wednesday to dismiss a lawsuit seeking access to parking
tickets issued by the University of Oklahoma.
Chief Judge Vicki Miles-LaGrange said that at this point in the litigation, it’s “plausible that parking
citations and vehicle registrations are not educational records as defined by FERPA, and therefore, are
subject to the (Oklahoma Open Records Act).”
OU journalism student Joey Stipek filed the lawsuit in May 2013 seeking electronic copies of vehicle
registrations and parking citations issued to students in the spring 2012 semester.
OU officials claimed the information is confidential under the federal Family Educational Rights and
Privacy Act, or FERPA. OU and Oklahoma State University officials have made that claim for years even
though courts in other states have ruled otherwise.
Miles-LaGrange said Stipek’s lawsuit “contains sufficient factual matter for the Court to plausibly believe
that (OU) is required to make available the requested records pursuant to the OORA.”
Stipek had filed his lawsuit in Cleveland County District Court. But the university moved it to federal
court and filed a motion to dismiss it.
Stipek, in a recent article for The Oklahoma Daily, noted that OU, OSU, and the University of Central
Oklahoma cited FERPA for refusing to release the names of students issued parking tickets, saying their
names are educational records.
But Oklahoma City Community College made its student parking tickets available for inspection, he said.
“Parking tickets provide a $2 million-revenue stream to Oklahoma’s four largest colleges and
universities,” wrote Stipek, “but so far it’s been impossible to learn which students are getting those
tickets, how much each of them are paying in fines and whether any students are getting preferential
treatment at three of those schools.”
Stipek is being represented pro bono by attorneys Nicholas Harrison, an OU alumnus based in
Washington D.C., and Kevin Taylor, based in Oklahoma City.
Harrison received FOI Oklahoma’s 2012 Ben Blackstock Award because of his reporting for The
Oklahoma Daily as a University of Oklahoma law school student.
Joey Senat, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
OSU School of Media & Strategic Communications
OU student says University records are shrouded in secrecy
Posted 5:27 pm, July 31, 2014, by Andrew Donley, Updated at 06:42pm, July 31, 2014
NORMAN, Okla. - Parking tickets are pretty common on many college campuses.
However, one Oklahoma student says he thinks certain people are getting special treatment when it
comes to paying fines.
An ongoing battle between the University of Oklahoma and one of its Journalism Students has made its
way to Federal Court.
Joey Stipek says he's battled OU for years, over whether or not parking tickets on campus are public
record.
Stipek claims the records are being hidden to keep the special treatment of so-called elite students a
secret.
"You see students getting favoritism, whether it’s student government, a student whose parents are
donors, or student athletes, they get their tickets excused," said Stipek
Stipek says he took his allegations to the District Court of Cleveland County.
The director of the Open Records Office for OU, Rachel McCombs, says there's a simple reason why the
citations are kept private.
According to court records, “The citations were protected under the federal educational rights and
privacy act and, thus, exempt from disclosure under the Oklahoma Open Records Act,” said McCombs.
Stipek's attorney Nicholas Harrison said "If these were academic records that are protected by
F.E.R.P.A., you don’t leave transcripts on the windshield of a car... Those are locked up and those are
protected. Those types of records are a completely different animal than the citations that he's asking
for."
A representative for the Department of Education says OU’s interpretation of the act is wrong.
NewsChannel 4’s Andrew Donley asked "Are parking tickets part of an education standard protected by
F.E.R.P.A.?”
The Department of Education Official said "No, parking tickets are not educational records. They are not
protected through F.E.R.P.A."
"So what basis would the school have for claiming that?" Donley asked.
The Department of Education Official said "Yeah they're incorrect in their estimation. Parking tickets are
not considered education records."
With the court case now heading to federal court, Stipek says it’s not about the tickets anymore. He says
It's the principle of maintaining access to the truth and protecting that right.
"Those who stand for nothing fall for anything," Stipek said.
Boren releases OU parking tickets
By Joy Hampton Senior Staff Writer @joyinvestigates Nov 12, 2014
A lengthy legal drama ended this week with the release of student parking tickets by University of
Oklahoma President David L. Boren.
“Today, I have ordered that information regarding OU parking tickets should be available to the public
and the media,” Boren said in a statement on Wednesday afternoon. “While there are differing
interpretations of the federal law, I have personally and carefully considered the issue, and I believe that
this action does not violate the intent of the federal privacy law.”
The OU student run newspaper, The Oklahoma Daily, announced Wednesday it would be joining an
open records lawsuit against the university.
“We hope this lawsuit will serve as a precedent for colleges and universities where administrators are
misinterpreting an important federal law which, in turn, keeps information from the public,” the
editorial that covered the Daily’s front page reported Wednesday.
Joey Stipek filed the lawsuit in May 2013 after OU officials said student parking tickets are considered
confidential education records under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA.
"I'm glad there has been a resolution to this case," Stipek said. "I'm really at a loss for words because I
wasn't expecting resolution this quickly. I'm glad President David Boren is the kind of leader to listen to
student voices and to bring this to a resolution."
The battle started in 2012 when Stipek, then The Oklahoma Daily's online editor, requested a database
of parking tickets issued that spring semester.
While Stipek was given statistical information about the number of citations issued and dismissed each
year, the records did not include identifiable information about vehicle registration.
In September, the FOI Oklahoma Inc. board of directors awarded a $2,000 grant to help support Stipek
— a student member of the Freedom of Information group — with the Open Records Act lawsuit against
the university.
“I think me and my clients are delighted about the decision,” said attorney Nick Harrison who was
handling the case. “We’re definitely happy that the OU Daily is getting access to the parking tickets
they’d been asking for. It’s been a long process.”
Harrison graduated from OU law school in May 2011. He also wrote for the student newspaper and won
an FOI Oklahoma award for his work at the university.
Boren's characterization of the parking ticket records coincides with Harrison's view.
“In my opinion, the records in question are traffic violation records, and are not the kind of sensitive
student records which are covered by the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act.,” Boren said in his
statement. “I have directed the General Counsel’s Office and other relevant university officials to take
the appropriate steps to implement this decision. I have no reason to believe that there has been any
impropriety in the parking ticket program, but I believe that the public has a right to know how it has
been implemented.”
Harrison said FERPA protects student privacy dealing with grades and student conduct issues whereas
parking or traffic tickets would normally be public information in non-university settings.
Boren’s decision, while showing the administration's support for transparency, means no legal
precedent will be set regarding how universities apply open records laws.
“I think it’s somewhat of a downside, I would have enjoyed taking the case before a federal court and
then the Tenth Circuit court of appeals and setting a precedent that applied to several different states,”
Harrison said.
Stipek’s case was the first Harrison took upon passing his bar exam. The attorney is currently living in
Washington, D.C. Harrison’s family moved to Oklahoma when he was two years old and his roots are still
in this area.
He said he has had a love for the U.S. Constitution since second grade. Harrison said his elementary
teachers and his teachers at Del City High School nurtured his interest in government and open records
issues.
Joy Hampton
366-3544
OU President Boren orders parking tickets made
public
Posted on 12 November, 2014 by oklahomafoi — Leave a reply
The University of Oklahoma reversed course on public access to school-issued parking tickets this
afternoon just hours after the student newspaper joined a lawsuit seeking access to the records.
For more than four years, OU officials had denied access to the parking tickets issued to students, calling
them confidential education records under the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or
FERPA.
Joey Stipek, an OU student and member of FOI Oklahoma, filed his lawsuit in May 2013. The FOI
Oklahoma Inc. board of directors awarded him a $2,000 grant in September to support the lawsuit.
On Wednesday, The Oklahoma Daily published a front-page editorial announcing it was joining Stipek’s
lawsuit. The newspaper’s editorial board said it hoped the lawsuit would “serve as a precedent for
colleges and universities where administrators are misinterpreting an important federal law which, in
turn, keeps information from the public.”
Then at 3:30 p.m. today, OU President David Boren issued a statement announcing that he believes the
parking ticket records should be available to the public and the media:
Today, I have ordered that information regarding OU parking tickets should be available to the
public and the media. While there are differing interpretations of the federal law, I have
personally and carefully considered the issue, and I believe that this action does not violate the
intent of the federal privacy law. In my opinion, the records in question are traffic violation
records, and are not the kind of sensitive student records, which are covered by the Federal
Educational Rights and Privacy Act. I have directed the General Counsel’s Office and other
relevant university officials to take the appropriate steps to implement this decision. I have no
reason to believe that there has been any impropriety in the parking ticket program, but I
believe that the public has a right to know how it has been implemented.
Note that Boren said the parking tickets are traffic violations records and “not the kind of sensitive
student records” deemed confidential by FERPA.
Why did it take Boren so long to come to that conclusion? A number of legal analyists came to the same
conclusion years ago.
In 2010, The Oklahoman criticized OU and OSU for claiming FERPA protects parking tickets issued to
students. “The federal law was designed to protect students’ academic records, not such things as
tickets issued to students for parking in the faculty lot,” the newspaper said in an editorial.
That came after a student in my reporting course wrote an article for The Daily O’Collegian in which
legal experts criticized the two universities for refusing to release the information.
That criticism was based in part on a 1997 Maryland appellate court ruling that parking tickets were
public under that state’s open records law because committing a parking violation has nothing to do
with a student’s education. A North Carolina court came to the same conclusion in 2011.
And in May, a federal judge refused to dismiss Stipek’s lawsuit, saying it was “plausible that parking
citations and vehicle registrations are not educational records as defined by FERPA, and therefore, are
subject to the (Oklahoma Open Records Act).”
So, perhaps Boren finally read the writing on the wall and decided not to add to the attorney fees OU
would have to pay Stipek. And perhaps he wanted to avoid another court ruling that wouldn’t sit well
with other university presidents.
Which bring up this question: Will President Burns Hargis come to the same conclusion as Boren if OSU’s
parking tickets are again requested?
If Hargis doesn’t, Stipek’s attorneys — Nicholas Harrison, an OU alumnus based in Washington D.C., and
Kevin Taylor, based in Oklahoma City — have some experience in this area.
Joey Senat, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
OSU School of Media and Strategic Communications
OSU agrees to release student parking ticket
information
Posted on 14 November, 2014 by oklahomafoi — Leave a reply
Oklahoma State University followed the University of Oklahoma’s lead on Thursday, saying it would
release the names of students who receive parking tickets.
“In keeping with the Oklahoma Open Records Act, Oklahoma State University has withheld the names of
students receiving parking tickets to protect their privacy,” OSU spokesman Gary Shutt told the The
O’Colly. “However, going forward, the university has decided to make student names available through
the open records process.”
For more than four years, OSU and OU officials had contended that the parking tickets were student
education records kept confidential by the federal Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, or FERPA.
But OU President David Boren announced Wednesday that he now believes the parking ticket records
should be available to the public and the media.
“In my opinion, the records in question are traffic violation records, and are not the kind of sensitive
student records, which are covered by the Federal Educational Rights and Privacy Act,” Boren said.
His change of heart came a few hours after The Oklahoma Daily announced it would join a 2013 lawsuit
seeking access to the information.
The original plaintiff, Joey Stipek — an OU student and FOI Oklahoma member — said Friday he will
agree to dismiss the lawsuit and expects that OU will pay his attorney fees.
Stipek sought the records in 2012 to determine if OU athletes got preferential treatment for parking
tickets.
On Wednesday, Boren said he has “no reason to believe that there has been any impropriety in the
parking ticket program, but I believe that the public has a right to know how it has been implemented.”
In September, the FOI Oklahoma Inc. board of directors awarded Stipek a $2,000 grant to support the
lawsuit.
Stipek is being represented Nicholas Harrison, an OU alumnus based in Washington D.C., and Kevin
Taylor, based in Oklahoma City. Harrison received FOI Oklahoma’s 2012 Ben Blackstock Award because
of his reporting for The Oklahoma Daily as a University of Oklahoma law school student.
Harrison is on FOI Oklahoma’s list of attorneys willing to represent individuals, members of the media,
and organizations seeking documents under the Oklahoma Open Records Act or alleging violations of
the Oklahoma Open Meeting Act.
Joey Senat, Ph.D.
Associate Professor
OSU School of Media and Strategic Communications
‘Students Speak, Change Happens’: OU & OSU to
Release Parking Ticket Records
Posted by Dan Reimold on Friday, November 14, 2014 · Leave a Comment
Parking ticket records at the University of Oklahoma and Oklahoma State University will be released to
the press at their request. All it took was a lawsuit, an 18-month stalemate, a special front-page editorial
and a student newspaper preparing to legally fight against the school which partially funds it.
As I previously posted, in May 2013, Joey Stipek, an OU student and current Oklahoma Daily special
projects editor, filed a lawsuit against university president David Boren and Open Records Office director
Rachel McCombs. The suit alleged that the school repeatedly, and illegally, rebuffed his efforts to
acquire “records he believes are public” and potentially newsworthy.
As Stipek wrote prior to the lawsuit, “OU gave out almost 52,000 parking citations last year, then
dismissed almost a third of them. But you won’t find out here whether athletes, student leaders, faculty
or any other special interest group got special treatment. The reason? OU won’t release the records.”
Two days ago, the OU Daily dropped an editorial bombshell across its entire front page: The paper was
planning to join Stipek’s suit.
As a portion of the editorial contended, “This lawsuit isn’t merely about finding out who is getting
parking tickets — it’s about a public institution denying access to records and citing an act that does not
apply. While we don’t have a reason to believe OU has anything to hide in these parking ticket records,
there is no way to know until the records are released.”
Cue a huge change of heart among the OU administration. Was it the power of the editorial? Its front-
page prominence? The threat of a looming, much more public lawsuit? A far-too-long-delayed grasping
of the obvious? Regardless, only hours after the issue sporting the Daily’s editorial appeared across
campus — and a year and a half after nothing but silence and stonewalling — OU president Boren
suddenly responded with dramatic decisiveness. He called for the immediate release of the requested
records and declared them public moving forward.
Why the uber-fast about-face? I asked Stipek. His take:
“I think the Daily joining the lawsuit had a lot to do with it. I think, at the same time, President Boren has
shown a history of listening to student voices. I think when you have the most powerful student voice on
campus saying this is important, it becomes hard to ignore. Lawsuits are also expensive. I think this
could have become more costly to the university as it continued to drag on and they lost.”
I also checked in with Stipek about where this leaves the battle he began in spring 2013. In his words:
“It’s a victory. It ends this fight. The Daily is going to file for these records [the parking tickets] to see if
any special treatment is being granted at OU. Unfortunately, student parking tickets are still cited as
FERPA protected records at our rival institution, Oklahoma State University, or even at University of
Missouri. It’s my sincere hope students at both those institutions file and fight for those records and
write stories.”
Moments after he wrote those words, O’Colly editor-in-chief Catherine Sweeney at OSU tweeted
similarly nice news: OSU will also release its parking ticket records.
Bottom line, as the header of a related Daily special report confirms, “Students Speak, Change
Happens.”