Records of misconduct on college campuses are hard to obtain. Inside Investigator recently published our second investigation into sexual misconduct on public college campuses in Connecticut, focused on the University of Connecticut (UConn). Our first investigation focused on the Connecticut State Colleges & Universities (CSCU) system because, at time of publication, UConn had not provided any documents responsive to a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request filed 17 months earlier.

Patchwork, our second investigation, started as an entirely different concept. Born out of ongoing frustration with our continued inability to obtain records, amidst two concurrent Freedom of Information Commission (FOIC) complaints against UConn and CSCU, we initially intended to publish a piece comparing the response times of public university systems across the Northeast to identical requests for sexual misconduct records.

As I’ve mentioned countless times before, Connecticut’s lack of a real limit to the length of time public agencies have to respond to FOIA requests allows officials who don’t want to be accountable to slow-walk and delay responding to requests. While it’s not unreasonable for agencies to take longer to respond to larger requests for records, UConn and CSCU’s response to our identical requests for “all records pursuant to any investigation into sexual misconduct of any faculty or staff member from January 1, 2018, to present,” filed in September 2023, certainly fell into the category of unreasonable delays (though there were also other factors at play).

Our theory was that we would be able to obtain records of misconduct at other university school systems much more quickly, as most other states in the region (Maine being an exception) have a specific number of days in which public agencies must respond.

But what we found instead was that many states had a more aggressive interpretation of personnel records that shut off public access to employee misconduct records entirely. For example, the University of Rhode Island cited state law exempting “All investigatory records of public bodies . . .pertaining to possible violations of statute, rule, or regulation other than records of final actions taken, provided that all records prior to formal notification of violations or noncompliance shall not be deemed to be public” from its Access to Public Records Act (APRA) in denying my request. They also cited their APRA personnel records exemption, which states, “Personnel and other personal individually identifiable records otherwise deemed confidential by federal or state law or regulation, or the disclosure of which would constitute a clearly unwarranted invasion of personal privacy.”

There is a similar exemption for personnel records in Connecticut’s FOI statute, but the FOIC and state courts have interpreted it more narrowly than other states, finding that general concerns about personal privacy do not override the public’s interest in disclosure in every case. A 1993 Connecticut Supreme Court ruling found that disclosures involving public employees are “presumptively legitimate matters of public concern” and that public employees have a diminished expectation of privacy when they accept a public job as the public has a vested interest in when they do and do not perform their duties.

The burden to prove releasing personnel records would invade an employee’s privacy is on an agency, and they must satisfy both prongs of a two-part test: (1) by showing that the requested records are not related to a legitimate area of public concern and (2) that disclosure of the requested information would be “highly offensive to a reasonable person.”

That’s good news for requesters in Connecticut, as it makes employee misconduct records much more attainable than in other states, who shut off public access to tools that help uncover misconduct and corruption.

But it, of course, does not mean Connecticut’s law is perfect. In our initial requests to CSCU and UConn, we requested “all records” related to investigations into sexual misconduct, as well as disciplinary records.

That’s the kind of language many people use when filing FOIA requests, especially when they’re not sure exactly what documents public agencies maintain that might be responsive to information they’re seeking. It is perfectly legitimate language, and that type of breadth is often necessary to ensure an agency does not narrowly tailor a request to avoid accountability.

However, there are also public agency officials who will play games with that kind of language and argue it’s so broad they can’t possibly understand and fulfill the request. If that’s the case, and there are cases where it may be a legitimate argument, agencies have the responsibility to engage requesters and try to better understand and narrow the request. Public officials have a much better understanding of what records they maintain than the public does.

But that’s not what UConn and CSCU officials did. Instead, they arbitrarily narrowed the request without communicating with us about it. In our initial CSCU request, we provided a list of documents we believed were missing, as well as redactions that appeared improper, and negotiated from there.

UConn went so far as to argue that they were not obligated to honor our request for “all records” and that the documents they had turned over were sufficient because they summarized the content of documents they had chosen not to turn over. That argument is obviously ludicrous, and the FOIC rebuked and fined the school for the way the request was handled.

Both UConn and CSCU did provide more complete responses to subsequent requests for misconduct records that I filed. Now that we’ve filed five requests between the two schools, I have a much better understanding of how those requests should be worded to provide the most complete response — something we’ll continue to do as we work to build a comprehensive picture of repercussions for misconduct on college campuses.

If you’re interested in obtaining similar documents (make sure to check out our FOI library, which contains links to all the documents we’ve obtained from both schools), here are some tips:

1. Requests for “all records” related to investigations are valid. But identifying documents by name can ensure they are provided as part of a school’s initial response and do not require timely back-and-forth to obtain. Below is a list of documents we have received as part of the standard investigation procedure from either UConn or CSCU:
   • discrimination complaints
   • complaint statements
   • witness statements
   • notifications of the investigation sent to employees under investigation
   • interview notes or summaries
   • communication, including email and phone records or transcripts, involving investigators, witnesses, or employees under investigation
   • police reports
   • police narratives
   • communication, including email and phone records or transcripts, between investigators and police
   • hearing notices (this is particularly relevant for Title IX proceedings, where a finding of a violation occurs at a hearing rather than in a report)
   • letters or other correspondence sent as part of an investigation
   • final investigation reports
   • university code of conducts, policies or procedures involved in investigations
   • no contact orders
   • text messages, pictures, or any other attachments to emails, correspondence, or investigation reports
   • correspondence with union representatives
2. Similarly, for disciplinary records, we’ve received the following types of documents:
   • stipulated agreements
   • documentation of any disciplinary training or courses ordered
   • notifications of pre-disciplinary conferences
   • correspondence involving union representatives, employees investigated for violation of policy, relevant faculty management or Human Resources
   • notifications or documents related to appeals of misconduct findings
   • resignation notices or related correspondence
3. At UConn, investigators in the Office for Inclusion and Civil Rights (formerly the Office of Institutional Equity) handle misconduct allegations. Email correspondence involving employees and related to investigations into policy violations can also be FOI’d.
4. CSCU has multiple offices and campuses that handle complaints and investigations. Filing an FOI with the Board of Regents is the most efficient way to FOI investigations across all campuses.

If you have other questions or need help with a FOIA request, please reach out to Katherine@insideinvestigator.org, and we will be happy to help.

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