Secrecy Is Contagious

[NOTE: The link to the Oregonian article now works.]

A university that covers up its racial data will also, if the University of Oregon is typical, cover up, or attempt to cover up, its financial data.

I have written before about University of Oregon economics professor Bill Harbaugh’s dogged efforts to pry information about the operations of its affirmative action programs from resistant university administrators (see here and here). One of his encounters, mentioned in an Oregonian article today, will strike many readers (but none, I suspect, in academia) as bizarre:

The institution’s “obsessive secrecy” was such, Harbaugh claims, that University President Dave Frohnmayer “was unwilling to give me copies of the university’s affirmative action plan. He and his lawyer, Melinda Grier, spent months trying to hide that from me.”

For those with short memories, Frohnmayer helped to craft and openly championed the state’s public records law back in the 1970s.

Now, as today’s article reveals, Harbaugh has also forced the release of embarrassing data about the university’s attempt to secure funding for a $200 million basketball arena.

Secrecy may be contagious, but fighting it seems to be habit-forming.