STAFF EDIT: Policing public access

Student journalists at private universities in Massachusetts are routinely denied access to incident reports from campus police departments, including Boston University's, even though these forces affiliated with private institutions -- and protected from open-record laws -- derive their privilege as law enforcement officers from a law that grants them special state police status. Although incident reports made by police on public college campuses or in the state or municipalities are public records, reports kept by university police are withheld. For this reason, the BU Police Department is not required to hand over an incident report for a Tuesday night accident in which a police cruiser struck a student crossing Commonwealth Avenue. The Daily Free Press has obtained the Boston Police Department's incident report, completed early Wednesday morning, but may never see a formal report from the BUPD. This should never be acceptable.

The relationship between student media and campus police departments has long been fraught with conflict. Although the Family Education Rights and Privacy Act rightly ensures educational records remain confidential, a Missouri court determined in 1990 that this legislation does not preclude student journalists from obtaining records related to campus police actions.

Some states that give power to private university police forces have amended laws to make police reports into public records. In March 2006, the Georgia state legislature changed the Campus Policemen Act to make records at private schools more accessible. This year, the Massachusetts state legislature considered a bill that would require private police forces at colleges and hospitals to release incident records. Because college police are allowed to exercise the same arrest, search and investigative privileges within their jurisdictions as state police, their records, especially when they concern an incident that involves a member of the force, should be public. The legislature should move to make access possible.

In June 2007, Richard Doherty, president of the Association of Independent Colleges and Universities in Massachusetts, testified at the State House that private university police records should not be disclosed to student reporters, claiming, after a 2006 case in which The Harvard Crimson sued Harvard University for access to police records, any such law would encourage "'smoking gun' or 'gotcha' journalism [that] has no place on a college campus." However, the purpose of open-record laws has never been to challenge the intent or question the integrity of journalists. Student journalists, and the realm in which they work, should not be subject to selective censorship that would impede the existence of a free press in society. To hold campus police to the same standards as state police and ensure student journalists are working in an atmosphere comparable to that in which they will one day work as professionals, records must be made open.

When police refuse to comment on a situation, students are only left to assume the worst or suppose foul play may be at work. The illegal turn the BUPD officer told the BPD he made should be known to the BU community, and students should expect full disclosure from the people charged with their protection. As Tulane University police have refused to comment on the alleged assault of a student by a Tulane police officer -- a severely more sinister and ill-intentioned act than what occurred at BU -- students have been left to speculation and rumors, prompting suspicion about the administration and campus police.

Both the institutional attitude and legislation surrounding university police report confidentiality must change. Police who are assigned the same privileges as state police officers should be held to the same accountability standards.