As part of the university's response to a long-running academic and athletic scandal, it launched a new public records tracking website Wednesday. The public can see what requests have been made of the university.
One piece of the University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill’s response to the report of Kenneth Wainstein on a long-running academics and athletics scandal was to launch a new public records site at publicrecords.unc.edu.
At the new records site, people can see a log of what requests have been made of the university since July 2, 2014. The log shows who made the request, what the person was seeking, how long the university expects it to take for the request to be filled, an estimate of costs to the university and the date that the request was fulfilled.
Unlike a similar site unveiled by the City of Greensboro in July, the actual records are not being made available on the UNC Chapel Hill site. It also does not appear to be updated in real time, like the Greensboro site is.
UNC’s public records portal also contains contacts for making specific types of public requests and suggestions on how to prepare requests. According to the site, “[t]he University requires requests to be in writing” even though the N.C. Public Records Law allows valid requests to be made orally. The site also states that requests “should include” detailed contact information even though the law would require an anonymously made request to be fulfilled.