Harvard's student newspaper has lost a legal battle to gain greater access to university police records, but officials say that Penn should not be affected.
Harvard's police department currently provides a daily log of crimes and arrests, but Harvard's paper, The Crimson, argued that the inability to access incident reports and other documents compromises the paper's ability to investigate certain issues, such as sexual assault and racial profiling.
The Harvard police give "plenty of details," Crimson President Lauren Schuker said, "but we only know to call about what's on the police log."
Most public police departments, including the Philadelphia Police Department, disclose data from all records, except for certain data regarding ongoing investigations or victim's names.
Private university police departments, however, generally did not release records until the 1990 Clery Act -- a federal law tied to financial aid -- required them to release daily logs and annual crime reports.
Penn's Division of Public Safety says it goes "above and beyond" the mandates of the act by providing additional information about incidents to certain student reporters in face-to-face meetings or by writing.
On Jan. 13, the Massachusetts Supreme Court ruled that, because Harvard police officers' powers were "far less extensive than the powers of regular police officers" and the officers are employed by Harvard University, a private institution, they couldn't be considered subject to the law.
Schuker said the paper would consider taking the case to the federal level, but it's currently waiting to see if an amendment giving access to the documents is passed in the state legislature.
The amendment, proposed by State Sen. Jarrett Barrios, would define all documents made or received by a university employee appointed as a "special state police officer" public record.
According to Penn Law professor Ed Baker, who specializes in Constitutional and First Amendment law, The Crimson is right to focus on legislation at this point.
For the case to be reviewed by a federal court, The Crimson would have to reframe the case around the First Amendment rather than state free-access laws, and Baker believes such a case would have "virtually no chance."
