From the Charlotte Observer (11/1/10): Two Latin words form the motto of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill: Lux Libertas - light and liberty. They are appropriate words for a university dedicated to learning. Yet UNC leaders believe that their obligations to student privacy under state and federal law do not give them the liberty to provide as much light about an ongoing football investigation as the state's news media do.
That why organizations such as the Charlotte Observer and the (Raleigh) News & Observer, the state’s two largest newspapers, have sued in Orange County Superior Court seeking a variety of public records: numbers from bills of phones issued to UNC football coach Butch Davis, athletics director Dick Baddour and a former coach, names and other information about tutors the school employed for athletes, parking tickets issued to 11 players, and other information believed to be public under North Carolina’s broadly worded open records act. That law requires that records, documents and other information created by state agencies be available for public inspection.
The list of exceptions is short, but universities believe their obligation to students exempts them from complying as fully with public requests as state executive branch agencies do. It’s part of a national debate over how much information should be made public by universities.