Due to an unsuccessful attempt at obtaining meaningful records from the past three meetings of the University of Texas Task Force on Free Speech and Assembly, The Daily Texan has filed a Freedom of Information request for those documents.

The FOI requests were hand-delivered Tuesday and the UT administration has 10 days to either furnish the information or turn the matter over to the Texas attorney general.
The task force in question is not subject to the Texas Open Meetings Act and is allowed to meet in private because it’s only in an advisory position.

In essence, the task force is powerless to enact any real change on campus, but its existence is important nonetheless. The very fact that it exists shows the administration’s willingness to approach such a legal and procedural minefield.

The University of Wisconsin at Whitewater is going through a similar dilemma. Recently, students called for the recall of free-speech regulations because the existing rules were too restrictive and ambiguous. To everyone’s surprise, UW-Whitewater actually listened!

The campus rescinded the analogous overbearing regulations and formed a committee to look into formulating new ones. The committee has a strong student presence and are open to the public according to Barbara Jones, UW-Whitewater chancellor for student affairs.

Apparently the concept of public participation in free speech policies is a foreign concept to the UT administration. From who subsidizes the salaries of our chancellor and president to who manages the UT System’s money, there is an ocean of information kept on a strict no-need-for-the-public-to-know basis.

Now, the clandestine nature of UT deliberations has reached almost comical levels as those deciding where, when and how we may exercise our constitutional rights of free speech and assembly have taken to meeting in private.

The administration should stop the absurdity and just open up the entire process to the public. Ultimately, the respect displayed for the UT community and its right to be notified of any changes to its constitutional protections will lend the task force more credibility and trust.

The Texan Editorial Board will publish immediate updates on the status of our FOI requests and any information that is ultimately furnished to the newspaper on behalf of our readers.

This editorial comes from The Daily Texan at the University of Texas-Austin.
This column was distributed by U-Wire.

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