“[W]e will not be seeing this resolution.”
That’s what Meghan Kircher, Speaker of the Senate for UCF’s SGA, wrote in an email sent to the GAC Chairman on Thursday.
This email refers to Senator Jacob Milich’s resolution to ask state lawmakers to clarify in Florida Statutes that public records maintained by SGA when spending a $20 million budget cannot be hidden from the public under a privacy law for private education records called FERPA. The move would create a more transparent Student Government.
DOCUMENTS: Read full email here.
However, it does not appear that this resolution for transparency in SGA will be coming anytime soon, as the resolution was killed behind closed doors.
It seems some in SGA not only want their activity to be secret, but their emails as well. On Thursday, Knight News was bounced around from office to office, seemingly being given the run-around by both the SGA and OSI offices until they had closed for the evening.
It wasn’t until Knight News returned to SGA’s full senate meeting that night, that the emails were obtained.
The emails appear to show Senate Speaker Kircher shooting down the resolution before it could make it to the committee floor, even though the emails indicate GAC Chairman Cara Gillaspie questioned Kircher’s decision, noting “it does seem time sensitive.”
In response, Kircher confirmed “we will not be seeing this resolution. Tyler [Yeargain] spoke with our lobbyists and has a better suggestion for a [new] resolution that I would be willing to put on first reading.”
Knight News later confirmed that the lobbyists referenced in the email was the GrayRobinson law firm, the same law firm currently defending UCF in the Knight News v. UCF lawsuit, in which UCF is fighting for an unprecedented order to keep SGA financial and public misconduct records private under FERPA. Is this same lobbying law firm influencing SGA about a resolution where SGA appears to have a conflicting position with UCF, as the emails suggest?
If so, Knight News is asking the question: “How is that not a conflict of interest for the GrayRobinson law firm?”
When we approached Kircher about this question, she claimed that SGA had been communicating with GrayRobinson about another matter, Chloe’s law, and that SGA did not want GrayRobinson involved with the matter of the resolution, which Kircher admitted would be a clear conflict of interest.
But if SGA and GrayRobinson were discussing another matter, that being Chloe’s Law, why would SGA be discussing it under an email titled “GAC Resolution?” And why would the resolution to stop FERPA from hiding SGA records – that was unrelated to the conversation as claimed by Kircher – be terminated as a result?
Knight News will continue to investigate this issue, and will do everything in its power to get the truth.
Stay tuned for continued coverage.
Editor’s note: The Knight News lawsuit against UCF has spanned three years. Knight News won a major victory at trial – a judge ruled UCF staff broke the law by referring Knight News to another UCF office to get a record in the custody of the person that Knight News requested it from. UCF did not appeal this clear order. The other issues on the lawsuit, including whether SGA records are “education records” under FERPA, are still on appeal by Knight News.
