Legislators are reworking a bill to protect private student emails from the public record, taking into consideration the concerns of journalists, students and UW administrators.
The task force on digital information privacy, a committee of the Wyoming legislature, proposed the original bill because legislators saw the state’s public records laws as so open to interpretation that emails sent between students—emails which students believe are confidential—could be released with a public records request.
“My views haven’t changed at all,” Senator Chris Rothfuss (D-Albany County), chair of the task force, said. “It’s exactly as ambiguous as I thought it was before.”
But members of the press—the main source of public records requests for student emails—disagreed, saying the public records law is already sufficient for keeping private emails and that a blanket exemption for all student emails was unnecessary.
“To even be considered a public document, the email has to be sent to or from a public official,” Jim Angell, executive director of Wyoming Press Association said. “That public official has to be acting in his official capacity.”
Vocal opposition to the original bill from the Wyoming Press Association and the Casper Star-Tribune led to the formation of a committee that aims to hash out the bill’s wording for a result that satisfies both a transparency-minded press and privacy-concerned university representatives.
The “blanket exemption” solution would remove all or most student emails from the public record. (It’s unclear whether that would also exempt emails to and from university or other officials, whose emails are a part of the public record.)
ASUW president Brian Schueler said he would like to see a blanket exemption.
“I can understand some of my emails, the ones pertaining to ASUW, being important to the students, who are ASUW’s constituency,” Schueler said. “But I don’t know how important they are to Bob Smith in Sheridan. Internal rules are the solution, not public records.”
Schueler, who is chair of the committee tasked with reworking this bill, and ASUW Vice President Emily Kath decided to see for themselves just how much a public records request turned up.
Kath requested all emails sent to or from Schueler regarding his election earlier this year. UW’s office of general counsel disclosed all emails pertaining to the election that were not exempted under other areas of the Wyoming Public Records Act.
The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) exempts educational records, so emails about grades, financial aid or tuition were disclosed. Medical records, personnel files, trade secrets, information about research projects and more are also exempted.
However, some of the emails which turned up in Kath’s records request included the locations and times individuals would be tabling—information Schueler said could be used for malicious intent.
“We’re lucky most people in Wyoming are good people but that’s no reason not to be cognizant of that worry,” he said.
Schueler said student emails being public record while so many other university documents are not (research, trade secrets, hiring information, just to name a few) is also disturbing.
“Lots of missions are exempt,” Schueler said. “Except for the ones without a lobbying group.”
The ASUW president said he is not worried about his own emails being made public, as he has known about the public records law for a long time, but that a lot of students are not aware of the state statutes. If a blanket exemption were to come out of the reworked bill, Schueler said he would support a school policy that allowed the Branding Iron or other community members to request his and other emails important to the student constituency.
Senator Rothfuss said another option was using the bill to define ASUW representatives as public officials, adding clarity to the public records law, which is currently lacking.
“If you look at the statute, ‘public official’ is not a defined term,” Rothfuss said. “We define public records but not public officials.”
This is one of the issues the committee was formed to solve.
Angell, Schueler and Rothfuss all said they believed a compromise can be reached.
“We’re pretty close on a lot of stuff,” Schueler said. “Nobody wants to see private emails made public.”
And indeed, not many student emails—private or otherwise—have ever been made public. The office of general counsel averages about 300 public records requests a year and those include UWPD reports, athletic agreements and more. A request for student emails is rare.
