The divide continues to expand between the Elmira Mangum
administration and the students, faculty, and alumni of the FAMU School of
Journalism and Graphic Communication.
Last week student reporters, J-School faculty, and alumni of
the school pushed back when the FAMU Assistant Vice President for the Office of
Communications Elise Durham urged the faculty senate to exclude the media from
its meetings.
Durham wrote the following in a February 17 email to Faculty
Senate President Bettye Grable and past Faculty Senate President Maurice Holder:
"As we work to enhance reputation management on campus, I’d like to make sure that we have the opportunity to function at internal meetings without the media’s presence.
"To my knowledge, the Faculty Senate meetings are considered internal personnel meetings and, so there really is no place for external media, including student media."
Grable, a journalism professor, called attention to the
Government in the Sunshine Law which sets requirements for open meetings in the
state.
“All I can say is based on my knowledge, FAMU is a state
institution and as such, must abide by Florida’s In the Sunshine laws,” Grable
said in a quote published by the Tallahassee Democrat.
FAMUan reporter TyLisa C. Johnson wrote that the FAMU “administration
is trying to ban media, including The Famuan and Journey magazine, from
covering Faculty Senate meetings.”
She added that: “This would be a violation of the state’s
Sunshine Law, according to Barbara Peterson, CEO of the Tallahassee-based First
Amendment Foundation…Pat Gleeson, general counsel to the Attorney General of
Florida agreed with Petersen that the Faculty Senate meetings are open to the
public.”
FAMU journalism alumna Lynn Hatter of WFSU began her story on
the controversy by explaining that it was the latest in a line of public
tensions between the Mangum administration and journalists.
“Florida A&M University is once again in the spotlight for
how it deals with the state’s open government and meetings law,” Hatter
reported.
Durham later claimed that she had been misunderstood.
“My perspective, which was buried in the Tallahassee
Democrat story, is that if these meetings are to be open, they should be open
to everyone,” Durham wrote in an op-ed for the Tallahassee Democrat and The
FAMUan.
The op-ed by Durham op-ed didn’t explain why her February 17 email only
spoke about holding faculty senate meetings “without the media’s presence” and
failed to include any statement saying that they should be open to all media
representatives.