Approval Documents for Monitoring of Hussman Faculty/Staff E-mail

Public Records Office
University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill
Campus Box #6205
Chapel Hill, NC 27599-9050

August 12, 2021

Dear Public Records Office,

The University of North Carolina’s Privacy of Electronic Information Policy states:

“Access to electronic mail on the University’s network of computers that involves reading electronic mail may occur only where authorized by the University officials designated below….” The policy states that in order to access faculty e-mail, the UNC “system administrator will need approval from the Provost and the Vice Chancellor and General Counsel or their designee(s) approved by the Chancellor to access specific mail and data for these purposes.” (See Privacy of Electronic Information Policy, located at https://policies.unc.edu/TDClient/2833/Portal/KB/ArticleDet?ID=132145).

Under the North Carolina Public Records Law, G.S. §132-1, we are requesting copies of the following:

All documents related to any approval requested or granted by university officials related to accessing e-mail accounts of faculty and staff at the Hussman School of Journalism and Media from July 1, 2021 to the present. For the purposes of this request, “university officials” means the Provost and Vice Chancellor, university General Counsel, the Chancellor, or such officials’ designee(s) involved in seeking or granting approval to access employee e-mail. For the purposes of this request, “all documents” includes correspondence between the aforementioned university officials related to requesting or granting authority to access employee e-mail from July 1, 2021 to the present.

Because North Carolina law specifies requesters can obtain public documents “in any and all media in which the public agency is capable of providing them,” please send the records in electronic form.

As the law requires, please release all reasonably segregable nonexempt portions of documents.

If any portion of this request can be fulfilled prior to the entire request being fulfilled, send us your reply and/or responsive documents as soon as they are available.

We prefer to receive these digital public records via download, email attachment or via digital storage medium that we will provide at our own cost. Please let us know what is the most timely method.

We request a waiver of all fees for this request because this request is made as part of the process of news gathering and not for commercial use. Disclosure of the requested information is in the public interest because it is likely to contribute significantly to public understanding of the operations or activities of government, namely the University of North Carolina.

State law requires that you respond to and fulfill this request “as promptly as possible.” If you expect a significant delay of over three working business days in responding to and fulfilling this request, please contact us with information about when we might expect copies or the ability to inspect the requested records. Please provide records as they are processed.

If you deny any or all of this request, please cite each specific statutory exemption you feel justifies the refusal to release the information and notify us of the appeal procedures available to us under the law.

If you have any questions regarding this request, please contact us at 336-278-5506 or reply to this email address.

Thank you in advance for your facilitation of this request.

Best,

Brooks Fuller, Director, N.C. Open Government Coalition, Elon University
Shannan Bowen, Executive Director, N.C. Local News Workshop
Neal Caren, Associate Professor of Sociology, UNC-Chapel Hill
Victoria Smith Ekstrand, Associate Professor & Caroline H. and Thomas S. Royster Distinguished Professor for Graduate Education, UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media
Jordan Green, adjunct faculty, Journalism Program, Wake Forest University and staff reporter at Raw Story
Pam Kelley, freelance journalist and former higher education reporter, The Charlotte Observer
Daniel Kreiss, Edgar Thomas Cato Distinguished Associate Professor, UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media and Principal Researcher, Center for Information, Technology, and Public Life; Faculty Affiliate, Information Society Project at Yale Law School
Erin Siegal McIntyre, Assistant Professor, UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media
Kate Murphy, Higher Education Reporter, The News & Observer
Kate Sheppard, Senior National Editor, HuffPost, and Teaching Associate Professor, UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media
Melanie Sill, founder, N.C. Local News Lab and former executive editor of The News & Observer
Praveena Somasundaram, Editor-in-Chief, The Daily Tar Heel
David Squires, Lecturer, Journalism, N.C. A&T University
Ryan Thornburg, Associate Professor, UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media
Kyle Villemain, Editor-in-Chief, The Assembly
Barry Yeoman, freelance journalist, Adjunct Instructor of Journalism and Public Policy at Duke University and Adjunct Instructor of Journalism, Wake Forest University
Phoebe Zerwick, Director of the Journalism Program, Wake Forest University
Deborah Dwyer, Adjunct Instructor, UNC Hussman School of Journalism and Media
Lindsie Rank, Program Officer, Individual Rights Defense Program, FIRE