Dec 15, 2019 3 min read

Remember that cheesy 1960s television series “Lost in Space”?

As the Robinson family drifted through the cosmos (seemingly never running out of food or water, amazingly enough), they occasionally came upon vexing situations that caused the bucket-of-bolts robot that accompanied them to exclaim, “That does not compute! That does not compute!”

Well, after California University of Pennsylvania reported last week that it does not, in fact, have records that it fought in court for more than a year to prevent the Observer-Reporter from seeing, the only reasonable response is “That does not compute!”

Really, it makes no sense. Why would you expend time and treasure trying to prevent a newspaper – or any other media outlet, or any taxpayer – from being able to see records when they don’t exist? Do attorneys representing the university really have nothing better to do than sit in courtrooms engaging in hair-splitting or arguing over arcane legal principles? Does the university have so much money that it saw this fight as a good way to spend it?

To recap: In 2018, the Observer-Reporter’s Gideon Bradshaw asked to see records of donations the university’s nonprofit foundation had received from Manheim Corp., a Pittsburgh-based contractor, during the late 2000s and early 2010s. In 2009, the university awarded a $10.5 million contract to Manheim to build a garage on campus that collapsed on move-in day in 2016 and has not been used since. Cal U. has since sued Manheim and Traveler’s Casualty and Surety Co. in Connecticut, both of which deny any liability.

After receiving Bradshaw’s request, Cal U. argued that records of the donations from corporations are exempt from public disclosure, in the same way that donations from individuals would be. The O-R and its representatives countered that, to paraphrase 2012 Republican presidential candidate Mitt Romney, corporations are not people. Pennsylvania’s Commonwealth Court agreed, as did the state’s Supreme Court in November. Left with no other option, Cal U. is obliged to produce the records.

But last week, Robert Thorn, the open records officer for the school, said the records don’t exist.

If that is the case, why didn’t they say so in the first place?

As Melissa Melewsky, media law counsel for the Pennsylvania NewsMedia Association pointed out, “The Right-to-Know Law requires agencies to conduct a good faith search for responsive records upon receipt of a request; the first thing the university should have done is look for the records. It is not typical for agencies to force a requester to litigate for 16 months through the appellate courts before actually looking for responsive records because the law requires that to happen as part of the agency’s initial response.”

She also called it “a massive waste of the requester’s time and money.”

Indeed.

The collapse of the garage has been an undeniable fiasco for Cal U. Its conduct when it comes to the release of its donor records has made a bad situation even worse.