Texas A&M University might fire professors for having students request public information documents from school
Austin American-Statesman
December 2, 2010
Faculty members and open-records advocates are criticizing a Texas A&M University System policy that bars professors from directing students to submit public information requests to A&M campuses and agencies.
Journalism teachers sometimes instruct students to file such requests under the Texas Public Information Act to gain experience using an important tool for reporters.
But in response to an inquiry from Tarleton State University in Stephenville, an A&M campus about 155 miles north of Austin, the system's general counsel warned that a faculty member could be disciplined and even fired for directing students to file requests with any of the system's 12 universities and seven agencies. Faculty members are free to direct students to file requests with other state universities and agencies.
"It looks like something that would be in The Onion," Wanda Garner Cash, a clinical professor of journalism at the University of Texas, said , referring to the publication that employs satire and fiction for its take on the news.
