I put in a public records request to the University to disclose Kevin Williams’ performance evaluations, but those are exempt from disclosure under Oregon law and University of Oregon rules. Therefore, there’s little chance of seeing whether he received good or bad marks from Frances Dyke before she demoted him.
Hey Hannah, one other thing, not to scrutinize: but I was wondering if you could post or let me know (email or facebook) what public records exemption/OAR they cited for this. Simply because I’m not sure I buy it.
A lot of personnel records are protected under ORS 192.502(2) and ORS 351.065 (and the implementing OARs) but usually the University can only protect these records from disclosure for “academic staff members,” or “faculty.” Further, I think the Emerald has a reasonably strong public interest argument to review the records seeing as the management of DPS is so pertinent to public safety, and I don’t really think a professional performance review is a unreasonable invasion of privacy, but the specific OAR/case law might say otherwise. And it is possible they’re citing some other statute or case law I’m not thinking of.
I’m mostly just curious, I don’t think they should be able to hide why they’re making changes to DPS. Anyway, thanks Hannah! Hope ya have a good break!