By the end of his first day, May 1, as Editor-in-Chief of The Mercury, the student newspaper at the University of Texas at Dallas, Gregorio Gutierrez had a list of questions. When he submitted them to university officials under the Texas Public Information Act (PIA), he was told the answers would cost $8,000.
Early in the morning of his first day on the job, a Pro-Palestinian encampment had been set up on the campus and named the Gaza Liberation Plaza by protestors. By mid-afternoon, 21 protesters, including students, faculty and alumni, had been arrested, and Gutierrez was asking whether the university had planned to take legal action from the very beginning. He was asking whether similar protests across the country had led the university to make plans ahead of the May 1 encampment for how a protest would be handled. He was asking why the protesters, who were arrested on the Dallas County side of the campus, were taken to the Collin County jail to be prosecuted in the more conservative county.
Since that day, Gutierrez says campus administrators have failed to respond to student journalists’ email and phone inquiries about the handling of the student encampment, and have canceled pre-arranged meetings with Mercury staff without offering to reschedule.
“We continued to persistently reach out to campus administrators to no avail. The most we got was redirection,” Gutierrez told the Observer. “We are covering the admin directly attacking its students, prosecuting both its students and its professors … We've already seen attempts at retaliation made against the paper.”
There is a “rocky history” between the university and its independent, student-run newspaper, Gutierrez said. Following the students’ initial coverage of the encampment, The Mercury’s faculty adviser was demoted and, in a meeting with the newspaper’s staff, the new adviser called their coverage of the encampments “malpractice,” Gutierrez said.
On June 3, the student journalists submitted a collection of keywords and questions to the university under the Public Information Act, which requires the disclosure of unreleased documents, emails, text messages and records by public institutions when asked. While it is free to submit a PIA request, searches that produce a large quantity of documents and would take a significant amount of manpower to prepare can result in a fee.
“Our Office of Legal Affairs got back to us some weeks after our initial submission asking for over $8,000, which we as a student newspaper don't have that kind of money,” Gutierrez said.
He believes the exorbitant amount of money was demanded to dissuade the students from continuing their investigation. While PIA allows for fee waivers if the information is “in the public interest,” UT Dallas officials declined to grant The Mercury staff a waiver.
“The University does not waive any fees for open records requests for any outlet or individual. This has been the standard practice of the University for several years,” a spokesperson for UT Dallas told the Observer. “Fees are assessed according to state law that accounts for hours and labor needed to gather and review the documents. University officials have routinely responded to student journalists to assist with their information requests and open records requests.”
According to the university, The Mercury’s initial records request would have required the review of more than 50,000 documents prior to their release. A revised records request lowered that amount to 20,000 documents. The University told The Mercury staff it will take 450 hours to complete the request.
"In Texas, just because Attorney General Ken Paxton is the main determiner of this kind of law, it's highly unlikely that he will side in favor of student journalists." — Gregorio Gutierrez, editor of the UT Dallas student newspaper
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The Mercury was able to negotiate the right to review the documents, meaning the records request is pulled together and one individual has a day to go through them manually, but the documents are not sent to the requestor. The right to review cost nearly $3,000, the university decided. So, Gutierrez set up a GoFundMe account to raise money for the documents.
The GoFundMe went live on July 14. Within 72 hours, the bulk of the funds had been raised. On July 22, the $3,000 mark was hit. It could still be months before the records are collected for Gutierrez’s review, and he has been told by the university he will be allowed to photograph documents for future reference, during his review period.
“It was honestly really wonderful for us as an organization to see how quickly people came in to support us,” Gutierrez said. “It shows that people support [The Mercury staff] despite the lack of support we’re receiving from campus administrators.”
A Hostile State for Student Journalists
Gutierrez consulted with the Student Press Law Center, a legal resource for student journalists navigating the first amendment rights of the press. The center advised the students not to appeal the records request to the Attorney General, where their case could be shut down completely.
“The SPLC did kind of think there is a case here that could be made in other states, but in Texas, just because Attorney General Ken Paxton is the main determiner of this kind of law, it's highly unlikely that he will side in favor of student journalists pushing against a kind of like narrative that's been built around attacking protesters,” Gutierrez said.
The Texas Public Information Act went into effect in 1973, but Paul Watler, a board member of Freedom of Information Foundation Texas, told The Mercury he believes institutions are becoming increasingly hostile to records requests like the one the student journalists submitted.
Extreme events such as mass shootings have incentivized institutions to obscure information and records that should be public knowledge, Watler said.
“I think there has been some regression in the law since the 1990s as Texas courts have, in broad terms, generally not expanded or reinforced the rights of requesters,” Watler told The Mercury. “When the Public Information Act was first passed in 1973, the courts generally were more receptive to ruling in favor of requesters until these rights peaked sometime in the 1990s and have since trended down.”
"The University does not waive any fees for open records requests for any outlet or individual. This has been the standard practice of the University for several years." — UT Dallas spokesperson
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Gutierrez does not believe the university is under any “outsized pressure” to be transparent about the days leading up to and following the pro-Palestine encampment, especially because many of the institutions in Texas established themselves in opposition to the students. After a similar protest took place at UT Austin, Texas Gov. Greg Abbott said the “protesters belong in jail."
Still, Gutierrez believes he has a right to have his questions answered.
“This is a public institution. Texas taxpayers are paying for UTD to exist. And just to see how they go out of their way to hide public records through these exorbitant costs, to keep information away from student journalists, alumni and affected individuals is deeply disheartening,” Gutierrez said. “You want to be able to see this free and fair information provided to the general public and yet campuses like UTD go out of their way to prevent that information from going out.”
