Posted on: Friday, March 18, 2005

ISLAND VOICES
Public's right to know must be protected

By Alexandre Da Silva

As the University of Hawai'i settled the highly publicized ousting of its former president, Evan Dobelle, last June, another important settlement went unnoticed by the media until a few weeks ago. In the same closed-door meetings in which the Board of Regents deliberated on Dobelle's performance and subsequent dismissal, the board also agreed to settle a $220,000 sexual discrimination lawsuit filed by a group of women against a UH professor.

At the time, as an editor of the student-run campus newspaper, Ka Leo O Hawai'i, I flipped through the meeting minutes, which had been made public in accordance with the state's Sunshine Law, and wondered how many other "lower-key" lawsuits the university had settled over the years and at what cost to taxpayers.

Citing freedom-of information laws, I typed a request asking the university for access to copies of all university settlements agreed upon by the regents in the past five years.

It wasn't long before a half-inch pile of out-of-court settlements worth more than a million dollars covered my office desk. The cases ranged from civil rights violations to failure to obtain tenure to personal injury and harassment.

The documents provided not only a glimpse into how the state's only public institution of higher education has been dealing with lawsuits and at what cost to taxpayers, but it also allowed me to begin asking other questions in the public interest: Why are lawsuits being filed against the university? Is the university taking steps to prevent lawsuits from happening? After all, the money comes from the pocketbooks of Hawaii's citizens.

But sometimes — and increasingly so after Sept. 11, 2001 — reporters encounter obstacles while accessing such information. A request I made a month ago for a list of classified research projects being worked on by UH faculty has yet to be processed. The issue of secret research has alarmed several within the university who feel they have the right to know what type of research a public-funded university carries out.

Last week I called one of the university's administrators handling my request to check the status of the pending documents. "I'm convinced that we are not doing anything that shouldn't see the light of day," he said, his tone somewhat defensive. "You'll get the information you are requesting, I just don't know how long it will take," he continued, blaming 9/11 for tightening the way the government discloses information. "It's a very cumbersome procedure."

Freedom-of-information laws exist to grant media and the public access to government documents and other information that would otherwise never see the light of day. While issues of national security should be taken into consideration, it is of foremost importance that the public's right to know remain intact.

Information sharing preserves the integrity of democracy — and that is too precious to compromise.

Alexandre Da Silva is a senior at UH-Manoa and is assistant editor for the school newspaper, Ka Leo O Hawai'i. He wrote this commentary for The Advertiser.