You must be Joshing
Talk about inflation.
Twice in the past eight years, the student editors at Florida Atlantic University have filed public records requests for “complaints submitted to the Office of Equity and Inclusion” – which covers stalking, discrimination, and sexual harassment, among other awful things.
The editors got those complaints free of charge both times, probably because there were only three complaints in 2016 and one last year.
Last month, the editors made the same request. Now FAU wants $1,400.
Why? No one knows. FAU’s public information officer won’t speak with the editors. Seriously, he won’t say a word to them.
And that’s given us an idea: Can we find anyone worse at their job than Joshua Glanzer? Read to the end and help us create an award for terrible PIOs.
The silent treatment
Josh Glanzer is FAU’s “associate vice president for media relations and public affairs.” But he refuses to relate to the University Press about some very public affairs. Like how many students have filed complaints about unsavory activities on campus.
Josh’s silent treatment won’t shock many student journalists. I hear this same lament whenever I visit other schools – from California to Rhode Island, from Indiana to Tennessee, and from Missouri to Florida.
But Josh Glanzer is special. And I don’t mean “exceptional.” I mean “unusual.”
He’s the only PIO I know who denies public records for blatantly illegal reasons, then gets mad when SPJ hires attorneys to go over his head. He always loses, too. It’s weird that someone who works at a university so stubbornly refuses to learn anything.
The last time was in October. The editors were denied public records, so they asked SPJ Florida for help. Once again, the chapter dipped into its Legal Defense Fund – which we’ve often joked should be renamed the FAU Offense Fund. We hired attorney Justin Hemlepp, who’s quite familiar with FAU, having represented SPJ against the school since 2017.
Five days after Hemlepp contacted FAU’s Office of General Counsel, the students got their records.
Josh Glanzer has another five days from right now to explain why formerly free public records now cost $1,400. Or SPJ will hire Hemlepp to go over his head yet again.
The price of silence
You might think Josh’s bosses would be pleased with his (lack of) performance. After all, Josh might be sparing the university from bad press. But here’s the thing: He’s really not. He’s costing his employer time and money. And in the end, he makes FAU look worse.
Every time an SPJ-hired attorney contacts an FAU-employed attorney, both are getting paid. Thankfully, SPJ’s attorneys don’t charge us much because they’re sympathetic to the students’ plight (and they’re irked at FAU’s stubborn refusal to follow the law).
But FAU’s attorneys surely have better things to do than repeatedly tell Josh Glanzer that, yeah, public records are indeed public, so hand them over.
Here’s the funny part: FAU’s public records often make the school look good.
My favorite example is from 2013, when FAU editor Dylan Bouscher requested three years of campus crime reports. That might sound like a lot, but those records are digital, and Bouscher was willing to pay a clerk for the hour or so it might take to collect, compress, and send them all.
Instead, FAU demanded $17,000 – a lot of zeros with zero explanation. FAU simply wouldn’t tell us where they got that number from.
So SPJ hired an attorney named Ana-Klara Anderson. After finally hearing back from FAU, Anderson told us that the price was so high because administrators intended to print out all those records, have an attorney review them, then scan them back into a computer.
“There are all kinds of flaws in their argument,” Anderson told us with lawyerly understatement. For starters, the police reports are already public record and don’t need an attorney to review them. But printing them out and scanning them back in? Really?
“I’m as annoyed and shocked at the exorbitant costs as you are,” Anderson said. “So I’d like to see a reasonable resolution to this, even if it means the only result is educating FAU on public records.”
Fat chance.
After we threatened to sue, Anderson notified us: “FAU has reduced its cost estimate to $900.” Still outrageously high, but 95% cheaper than before. So we paid it.
FAU obviously didn’t want to give us the records because they thought we’d find something damning. Indeed, we requested them to see if the school was obeying the Clery Act, which requires honest reporting of campus crime. Some schools have fudged their numbers, but FAU did a stellar job. Seriously, top-notch.
Boucher wrote as much – after writing scathingly about FAU’s records fiasco.
So FAU paid its attorneys to fight a public records request that was totally legal and totally complimentary. It just proves that some PIOs don’t even read what you’re asking for.
What a joke
This would all be funny if it wasn’t so illegal. It has us musing about a new SPJ award for the worst campus PIO in the country. We’ll mail a framed certificate to the “winner” and notify their boss.
The student editors would get something, too: An attorney, courtesy of SPJ, to agitate for their own public records, just like we do at FAU.
If you have an interest, an opinion, or a candidate, please tell us. We want to know if this is possible and desirable. Because we’re not Joshing here.
Michael Koretzky is SPJ Region 3 coordinator and SPJ Florida president. He served on the SPJ national board from 2008-10 and 2011-2019.