OPINION: Getting public records at USF is too difficult

The university’s current policy filters all media public relation requests through spokespeople, which is inconvenient and inefficient. *ORACLE GRAPHIC/DEEYA PATEL*

Between budget cuts, a crackdown on immigration and pushback on diversity, equity and inclusion programs, USF is participating in a slew of changes it won’t brag about.

Without public records, tuition-paying students, corporate donors and university employees may not know what programs and procedures the university is participating in.

But getting my hands on these records has been the most challenging part of my two years as a news writer at The Oracle.

Part of the problem is that Florida public records laws are vague, but the university should still provide these records within a “reasonable” time and at a “reasonable” cost, as outlined by Florida Statutes.

A 2025 University of Florida survey showed 55% of 51 investigative journalists faced a “major challenge” getting records due to delays or high costs.

If the university is not going to be transparent about where tuition money is going, how they are complying with controversial federal orders or what policy changes will impact students, the responsibility falls on journalists to reveal it for them.

Per the university’s public records policy, any media records requests must go through the Communications and Marketing team, meaning a busy spokesperson has to field all interview scheduling, questions and public records requests.

That cannot be the best use of their time.

Maybe if public record requests were off their plate, they would be more responsive and helpful in their other responsibilities.

USF needs a centralized public records custodian so media-related requests don’t have to go through spokespeople, whose job it is to promote the university and highlight what it does well.

Public records hold details, facts and information, which are rarely communicated in the short, vague, cookie-cutter statements university spokespeople so graciously give journalists.

A list of a dozen questions warrants a whole single sentence when it is about a touchy subject. Stories with different angles are given the same statement that tells journalists and their readers absolutely nothing.

Public records make up for this – when I can get them.

College papers are where journalists are trained and taught. Public records are as essential to this learning experience as a textbook is to a physics class.

If the university won’t give public records to its student journalists, they might as well keep the bookstore locked up too.

From my experience, the spokespeople who are fielding my records requests miss deadlines and my flurry of follow-up emails.

Former News Editor Julia Saad, who worked at The Oracle from August 2022 through May 2024, said these delays in getting records from spokespeople meant the article wouldn’t get published or would be published without all the information.

“They would delay it to a point where it was no longer news for us and we had to move on,” Saad said.

If a spokesperson cannot give records in this reasonable time for a reasonable cost, they have no business being the gatekeepers for these records.

Records are also a way for journalists to uncover what the institution isn’t telling people. One of these ways is requesting a log of all public record requests the university received.

Florida State University has a public records request portal – I got the school’s log of a week’s worth of record requests less than five hours after asking for it. The University of Florida does too – that took a day-and-a-half.

With those schools, I never had to go through a spokesperson.

That’s not the case at USF — the university does not have a log of public record requests it receives and does not have a central records custodian.

My only alternative for getting USF’s public records log was to request emails sent to a spokesperson, asking for any emails containing keywords, such as “public record.”

It would have cost almost $40 just to have someone from IT just to search the emails, and it would likely have cost more to obtain a copy of what the search returned.

I couldn’t even get a record of conversations about my own records request without running this costly IT search. And I requested that record from the same person my initial public records request went to.

It’s not a secret a college newspaper doesn’t have the budget to pay for records (if you want to know The Oracle’s budget, you can public records request that information).

Related: The Oracle needs your help

The solution to USF’s abysmal public records system is right in its backyard too – University Police has a great centralized records system.

I got the public records log for a month of requests from a department assistant – not a spokesperson – within an hour of sending my request to a centralized records email free of charge.

Former Editor-in-Chief Clinton Engelberger, who worked for The Oracle from May 2021 to May 2024, said public records would be a way for him to fact check his stories and ensure his articles were an accurate reflection of what the university was or wasn’t doing.

Engelberger said, without a new system, these spokespeople need to at least be more transparent about why a record will be costly or why it is taking so long to receive.

“It’s less about fixing the system and just at least putting a Band-Aid on it,” he said.

The university won’t be transparent, someone has to do it for them — and for journalists, that means we need public records.