tsiOhio to release documents to Ohio Supreme Court
This is pretty much standard procedure, but in the interest of tosu schadenfreude, I wanted to update everyone on the ESPN lawsuit against our friends down south, or next door for some of us. One interesting and encouraging part of the article about FERPA.
Timothy Smith said that FERPA is a "limited utility."
"(FERPA does not cover) relationships with third parties or people of campus, or people not related to their education. And clearly all this stuff falls outside," Smith said.
OSU's media relations department cited FERPA as the reason for not initially supplying the records to ESPN.
I'm assuming that's supposed to read "off campus". I'm still holding out hope that someone on the Ohio Supreme court has some cajones, or the female equivalent, to force the release of the unredacted documents to ESPN and that those documents reveal some major violation involving Mr. Sarniak and TP or JT.
Also interesting, some of the comments are pretty well written, especially the one about ESPN's conflict of interest. I guess Bucknuts readers don't venture over to The Lantern.
September 22nd, 2011 at 2:14 PM ^
Cojones is Spanish for balls. Cajones literally translated means "big boxes," so I guess you actually used that female equivalent you were looking for.
As for the article, I'm glad this situation is dragging out, and I hope the NCAA is watching. Not that it'll make much difference given their lack of any kind of -jones.
September 22nd, 2011 at 3:01 PM ^
That is too funny. If I'd only done that on purpose. So does cojones mean "little boxes"? I took three years of Spanish but somehow that kind of anatomy never came up.
September 22nd, 2011 at 5:44 PM ^
Well caja means box, so cajon is big box, and cajones is big boxes. Cojo means lame or crippled; el cojo can mean a one-legged man, so I guess if you want to reach, you could say cojones means two big dudes with one "leg" between 'em.
September 23rd, 2011 at 11:49 AM ^
* cajón also means drawer
September 22nd, 2011 at 7:57 PM ^
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Latin_profanity#C.C5.8Dle.C4.AB:_the_testicles
tl:dr;
Coleus, colei-Classical Latin
Culio, culionis-Late Latin
Cojones-Spanish
Cuglioni-Italian
etc.
September 22nd, 2011 at 11:18 PM ^
September 22nd, 2011 at 2:26 PM ^
Hopefully whatever legal entity that views these documents is unbiased and fully delivers the information that ESPN deserves.
September 22nd, 2011 at 2:28 PM ^
If OSU is found to have violated whatever Ohio FOIA that covers this stuff, is there any penalty? Is there some kind of oversight committe in the Ohio state government that will put them on probation or sanction them in some way?
September 22nd, 2011 at 3:34 PM ^
I'm just speculating as a lawyer here because I'm too lazy to check, but my guess is that If they were legimately acting under the belief that these docs were protected by some other regulation/statute than I doubt they'd suffer any penalties. I'd imagine at worst they'd have to pay ESPN's legal fees.
September 22nd, 2011 at 3:54 PM ^
That's too bad. There should be a standard that can't be crossed in order to stay in the clear legally. The last thing we need is a bunch of public entities stonewalling FOIA requests.
Personally, I think their "we're not releasing anything related to the ongoing NCAA investigation" email was atrocious and someone should have to answer for that, especially considering the implications for more important matters.
September 22nd, 2011 at 5:47 PM ^
Lawyer as well; I agree with MNI ...Tim. Getting fees is rare, especially if you've been dilligent and respectful to the court. I imagine tOSU's attorneys have been. Also, I don't know about awarding fees against tOSU to the NCAA in an Ohio court "playing well" there, either.
September 22nd, 2011 at 5:55 PM ^
Well, the fees would be one thing, but as a school that accepts millions and millions of dollars of public funds, shouldn't there be some oversight to their Open Records Act compliance? The state government in Ohio is really dropping the ball on its citizens if they don't have some type of oversight on a legislative level for public agencies not honoring FOIA (or ORA, whatever) requests.
September 22nd, 2011 at 7:54 PM ^
I think this is a rare example. For the most part these FOIA (or similar) requests do not go to the heart of a huge football scandal, and usually when a school would fall back upon a student privacy interest it is entirely legitimate. Not saying that's the case here at all, but they won't fashion case law because OSU may one day use it to skirt a football scandal.
Also, your oversight point is interesting. There's nothing that would prevent the Ohio legislature from conducting some sort of investigation of its own. I guess, other than the fact that they're all probably OSU fans.
September 22nd, 2011 at 8:22 PM ^
I was speaking more to their oversight part of it. They don't need to write new code, only launch an investigation into OSU's crappy job obeying the law that's already written. In ESPN's original brief they included an email sent from Ohio State that just read something like "we won't comment on an ongoing NCAA investigation", which is blatently illegal. OSU seems to have some hope of maintaining their FERPA claim, but that was an obvious violation that Ohio State's legal department should have taken action to correct.
I don't think it carries the same importance, but can you imagine the ACLU's reaction if the CIA or DOD refused to disclose unclassified documents based on that claim? There would be Senate hearings and heads rolling across that department.
September 23rd, 2011 at 7:33 AM ^
They're all probably OSU fans and it's an election year and they're already in hot water with a lot of voters over the way some controversial legislation is being handled. Other than that, we can expect that investigation to start any day now!
I've worked in county and municipal government and haven't met a higher level official/supervisor that is very concerned about being accountable to the tax/fee paying public. It's unfortunate, but that has been my experience anyway.
September 22nd, 2011 at 2:47 PM ^
"This cause originated in this Court on the filing of a complaint for a writ of
mandamus. Upon consideration thereof, it is ordered by the Court, sua sponte, that an
alternative writ is granted and the following briefing schedule is set for presentation of
evidence and filing of briefs pursuant to S.Ct. Prac. R. 10.6:"
"The parties shall file any evidence they intend to present within 20 days of the
date of this entry; relator shall file a brief within 10 days of the filing of the evidence;
respondent shall file a brief within 20 days after the filing of relator's brief; and relator
may file a reply brief within 7 days after filing of respondent's brief. The respondent is
ordered to submit under seal the unredacted copies of the requested records they claim
are exempt."
This is pretty standard. The parties submit any documents or affidavits to the court in 20 days. ESPN files a legal brief 10 days later. OSU files a brief in response, and then ESPN gets the last word with a small brief after that.
In the meantime, the court will be able to see the documents that OSU is holding back. That allows them to assess whether the are exempt from Ohio's Open Records Act (state version of FOIA).
I will post some of my impressions as soon as some of these filings become available.
September 22nd, 2011 at 5:41 PM ^
I think "tubes" was the word you were searching for.