UCLA fulfills year-old public records request, seven others pending

A former Daily Bruin reporter recently received records of emails between UCLA researchers and professors who coordinated efforts to resist participation in her story, a year after she requested them.

Former staffer Sonali Kohli first requested emails in September 2013 after traveling to Malawi in southeast Africa to report on healthcare in the region with researchers and members of the lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender community. The emails outline researchers’ frank discussions about Kohli and her reporting project in Malawi, where UCLA conducts research through its Program in Global Health medical center. The emails repeatedly question Kohli’s abilities and motives as a student journalist.

“Those comments were fueled entirely by a tremendous sense of concern for their staff, patients and the future of an important program working to prevent and treat those with HIV/AIDS in a place where those services might not otherwise exist,” UCLA spokesman Steve Ritea said in an email statement.

The records are the most recent in a series of public records requests submitted by the Daily Bruin that were fulfilled more than six months after they were first requested.

According to the California Public Records Act, state and local agencies – including the University of California – are legally required to make business, administrative and communication documents available upon request. There are exceptions to the law that prevent the release of private information, such as identification numbers and sensitive research.

For Kohli’s request, UCLA initially estimated that it would fulfill her request within a few months. The initial deadline was adjusted at least five times.

UCLA handles records requests on a case-by-case basis, with some taking longer to fill than others, Ritea said. The university had 600 requests last year.

“This particular request was very broad, implicating scholarly communications, patient privacy and confidential private information not subject to disclosure, thereby requiring several levels of review,” Ritea said in the email statement.

California law establishes a 24-day time period for agencies to set a reasonable deadline for when they can complete a request.

“Everything beyond (setting an estimated deadline) is a new and interesting violation of the law,” said Adam Goldstein, attorney advocate for the Student Press Law Center.

Meeting public records deadlines is a legal obligation that often has very few ramifications if violated, Goldstein said. Several universities or other public agencies often take an excessive amount of time to process backlogs of requests, he said.

Complicated requests that require large volumes of documents or information from multiple or different sources take much longer to fill than other requests and lengthen the process, Ritea said.

“Responding to some requests requires the review of thousands of pages of records to ensure that legally privileged material is not publicly released,” Ritea said.

In the past, The Bruin has requested emails between administrators and donors, contracts of campus officials, crime and maintenance logs and demographic data of UCLA students. UCLA is currently processing seven records requests from The Bruin, filed in the last two months.

Compiled by Erin Donnelly, Bruin senior staff. Contributing reports by Amanda Schallert, Bruin senior staff.