Part of a weeklong series

Several universities across the United States have open university judicial records, but ISU university officials said the judicial records at Iowa State will most likely stay closed.

“I would say from my standpoint these are better to be closed for the students going through it,” said Keith Bystrom, associate counsel for University Counsel.

He said he believes open records could be damaging to the individual going through the process.

“Our process is not one of trying to ridicule or embarrass students,” Bystrom said.

The goal of the ISU judicial process is to educate students, and he believes it is more easily accomplished in a closed system.

“For the most part, these are fairly sad problems that aren’t all that newsworthy, I don’t think,” Bystrom said.

Bethany Schuttinga, assistant dean of students for Judicial Affairs, agreed the records should stay closed.

“Because we are receiving federal money, we can’t have an open records policy,” she said.

The university is prohibited from having open records due to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, Schuttinga said. Under this federal law, student education records are private. After a student turns 18, parents are not even allowed access to the records, according to the U.S. Department of Education Web site at www.ed.gov.

She said under this law the university can only disclose directory information about students, like name, address, phone number and major.

Mike Hiestand, lawyer at the Student Press Law Center in Arlington, Va., said this was not necessarily true.

“There has been an ongoing controversy,” he said.

Some university judicial records are open because they fall under the open meetings laws for the individual state.

In Georgia, for example, university judicial records are a matter of public record. The Georgia Supreme Court ruled in the early 1990s the university judicial hearings fell under the open meetings law after a three and a half year legal battle.

Harry Montevideo, publisher of the University of Georgia student newspaper, The Red & Black, said reporters in Georgia are now allowed to report on university judicial hearings and the outcomes of the cases.

Jim Bove, assistant dean of students for judicial programs at the University of Georgia, said he thinks students at the university do not like the new open records policy.

“I think for the most part students don’t like it because they feel it is public humiliation,” Bove said.

He said he thinks over time the records will be closed again.

“We are the only state in America that still has this,” Bove said.

Hiestand said there is an exemption to the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act. If a student is found guilty of a nonforcible sex offense or violent crime, the school is permitted to release the information.

Bystrom said Iowa State would disclose information if it is “an issue of safety to the university.”

Some ISU students said they believe open records would be a positive change.

“I think they should let everybody know the outcome because they could be letting people off the hook and being unfair about it,” said Jodi Wilson, senior in psychology.

She also said she believed having the outcomes of judicial hearings a matter of public record may even deter student conduct code violations.

“People would also know the punishment before they commit the crime if it was in the rules,” Wilson said.

Veronica Burnham, junior in journalism and mass communication, said she believes the records should follow the same rules as normal state records.