The president of The Crimson, Lauren A.E. Schuker '06, issued the following statement today to staff members at the newspaper.

Dear Crimeds,

I write with some disappointing news. After a two and a half year fight, we lost our case against Harvard and the Harvard University Police Department, which was heard last November in the Massachusetts Supreme Judicial Court.

As most of you know, The Crimson brought suit against Harvard to force its Police Department to release more detailed crime reports. While Massachusetts public record law requires its public police forces to release reports filed in response to calls, the new court ruling asserts that, HUPD, a private entity, is not required by public record law to release all incident reports. This judgement seriously impairs our ability to report on sensitive issues affecting our campus community.

But our fight will not end here. This coming spring, we will work with the Massachusetts legislature on amending the public records act. We hope to collaborate with Massachusetts State Senator Jarrett T. Barrios '90 to pass a bill that he already introduced in 2004 to oblige campus police departments around the state to release detailed crime reports.

The current law, requiring campus state police departments to issue daily logs, was enacted thanks to the hard work of The Crimson. Hence we are following in historical footsteps by continuing the fight in the legislative arena for open access to police records.

The Court ruled in favor of HUPD this morning on the ground that Harvard is a "private educational institution," and that, although HUPD has the power to arrest and carries out public functions on behalf of the state, it is not an "agency" subject to the public record laws.

To provide some background on the case, in June 2003, The Crimson, citing public records law (G.L.c. 66, §10), requested all police records "including but not limited to incident reports" from the Boston and Cambridge Police Departments as well as HUPD. Both the Cambridge and Boston police departments complied, providing us with documents, including incident reports. But HUPD, claiming to be a private entity, denied our request.

HUPD is endowed with the powers of a public police force, including the power to arrest, but it does not comply with the rules of public reporting that regular police forces do.

This represents a serious national problem because campus police forces operate similarly across the country. The failure of HUPD to allow access to its records compromises our ability to investigate and report on issues of sexual assault and racial profiling, among other matters on the Harvard campus.

The way in which HUPD has impaired our freedom to report has reverberations far beyond the Harvard campus.  Many other student press organizations filed amicus briefs on our behalf, including the Student Press Law Center, the Heights Newspaper at Boston College, the Brown Daily Herald, the New England Press Association, the Society Professional Journalists, the Associated Collegiate Press.

We are grateful for that show of support, particularly because it underscores the national significance of the problem.

I will keep you updated on our progress working with the legislature. Accessing these records continues to be a vital issue to our reporting, and I have confidence that we will make progress proceeding through the legislative route. I would very much like Crimeds to get involved in lobbying the legislature. Please get in touch with me or President Elect Will Marra (wmarra@fas.harvard.edu), if you would like to help out.

Thanks for reading this and your support,
Lauren

Lauren A. E. Schuker
President
The Harvard Crimson