Des Moines Register
10-18-07
Geoffroy: Alumni records should be public
By CLARK KAUFFMAN
REGISTER STAFF WRITER
Iowa State University's privately run alumni association should be subject to
Iowa's public records law, ISU President Gregory Geoffroy said this week.
The association had taken the position that it is a private corporation and is not
required to make public its credit card marketing agreements with Bank of
America and other documents.
Geoffroy has taken the opposite position, saying any records that deal with the
association's work on behalf of the school are subject to public disclosure laws.
Geoffroy said it is clear to him that while the alumni association is a private
corporation, some of its functions are directly related to the public mission of the
university. Alumni association records related to that sort of work should be
treated as government documents that are typically open to public inspection, he
said.
"The employees of the alumni association are all university employees and they
occupy a university building right now," he said.
Geoffroy based his conclusion on a 2005 Iowa Supreme Court ruling that said
certain records of the privately run Iowa State University Foundation should be
treated as public documents since they relate to work done on behalf of the
school.
"It's very clear to me that the principles of the Supreme Court ruling on the
university foundation a few years ago apply equally well to the alumni
association," Geoffroy said. "So anything that the alumni association does that
could be reasonably construed as a governmental function, the records
associated with those activities are public records."
He noted that some alumni association functions, such as alumni cruises and
get-togethers, are not tied to university business.
At the University of Iowa and University of Northern Iowa, school officials have
taken the position that their alumni associations - which, like the ISU group, are
staffed by university employees - are private organizations and are not subject to
Iowa's public disclosure laws.
Steve Parrott, a U of I spokesman, said it's not for the university to say whether
its alumni group should be subject to Iowa's open-records laws. "That's a
decision for the alumni association to make," he said Wednesday. "It is, at this
point, a separate organization from the university."
Last month, The Des Moines Register asked ISU Alumni Association President
Jeff Johnson for copies of his organization's contracts with Bank of America.
Johnson refused, saying the group was not subject to the open-records laws.
Johnson then sent an e-mail to Geoffroy and other university officials to tell them
of his decision.
"I will not release our Bank of America agreement to them," he wrote. "I will not
release the agreement between us and athletics (to) them, either."
The school, however, had its own copies of those same agreements and readily
made copies available to the newspaper.
Geoffroy said he has followed up with alumni association officials to make it clear
that he believes the association should follow the open-records law in the future
when asked about documents pertaining to university business.