Could the debate over University of Notre Dame Security Police records, and whether they should be public, eventually shift to the Statehouse?
The judge in the case seemed to nudge the issue in that direction. While he ultimately decided that Notre Dame does not need to make its police records public, St. Joseph Superior Court Judge Steven Hostetler this past week wrote in his ruling: “Perhaps this will cause the Indiana Legislature to consider this important matter.”
After all, it was state legislators who first created and wrote the law years ago. Now, at least one local legislator says he’s ready to take on the question of how the law should apply to private universities.
State Rep. B. Patrick Bauer, D-South Bend, has vowed to author legislation or work with others on a bill that would change Indiana’s public records law to specify that records by campus police departments at private colleges and universities must be subject to public disclosure. He says he could introduce the bill as soon as January, when the next session starts.
“I believe any private police force should be under the same rules as a public police force because they’re acting instead of a public police force,” Bauer told The Tribune. “We cannot keep going on this way.”
The veteran lawmaker’s remarks came a day after Judge Hostetler ruled, in a suit brought against Notre Dame by ESPN, that the private university’s police department records aren’t public under records law. The sports media giant and its reporter, Paula Lavigne, sued the school in January when it refused to provide campus police records related to student athletes.
Bauer, a Notre Dame graduate, said he was equally frustrated with how his alma mater has handled sexual assault cases reported to campus police. A day before Hostetler’s ruling, retired NDSP detective Patrick Cottrell told The Tribune that of approximately 30 sexual assault cases he investigated over his 20 years on the department, not one resulted in criminal charges.