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OREM — Should campus police charge student journalists to look at the police blotter?
No, the Utah State Records Committee unanimously decided Thursday.
Utah Valley University police can no longer make student journalists pay a $5 fee to inspect initial incident reports, the committee decided in a 6-0 ruling, ending a monthslong appeals battle between UVU student reporters and campus law enforcement.
The decision was praised as a win for transparency by the Utah Headliners Chapter of the Society of Professional Journalists, while the student reporter leading the charge said she hoped the ruling would set a standard for other campuses in the state.
“I hope it shows that even if it gets hard, we’re not going to back down and we’ll try to keep doing our job the way we should do it as reporters,” Mack Jones, a junior communications major at Utah Valley University, said in an interview.
The Utah Valley University Police Department first started charging student journalists $10 to access initial incident reports — which include a brief summary of police calls — in 2017, according to Jones. Before that, reporters at the student paper has been able to look at the initial reports for free, she said.
After one particularly expensive week, when the newspaper paid $210 for 21 reports, Jones said the journalists pointed out to the police department that other universities in Utah, such as Utah State University and Weber State University, didn’t charge for initial contact reports. At that point, she said, the police department lowered its price to $5 per report.
A spokesman for Utah Valley University did not immediately respond to requests for comment Thursday night.
Reporters are just trying to keep the campus public informed and safe — that mission shouldn’t put them at odds with a police agency, it should put them on the same page about the importance of transparency.
–Eric Peterson, Utah Headliners
The student journalists appealed to the university in February, Jones said; when the appeal was denied, the Utah Headliners Chapter appealed to the Utah State Records Committee in April.
On Thursday, the committee sided with the journalists, a decision celebrated by the Utah Society of Professional Journalists chapter.
“The committee’s decision today shows that it’s not right for a campus police department to try and price reporters out of doing their jobs,” Utah Headliners President Eric Peterson said in a statement.
“Reporters are just trying to keep the campus public informed and safe — that mission shouldn’t put them at odds with a police agency, it should put them on the same page about the importance of transparency,” Peterson said.
Jones said she was pleasantly surprised by Thursday’s decision.
“I’m hoping that it at least sets a precedent so if other universities are having similar issues they can point to this and say, ‘Well you decided a similar thing for the UVU Review,’ and it’s something that can help college students,” Jones said.
