Last Wednesday wasn’t a slow news day.
Still, some readers suggested that our staff was grasping for stories when we published in Thursday’s newspaper that Ohio State officials refuse to divulge how much they paid Weezer to perform Friday on campus.
Every student should be concerned about that.
Weezer’s performance — and all others hosted by the Ohio Union Activities Board — would be impossible without the activity fee that all students pay. As a public institution, the university should release how it uses that money, according to Ohio’s open records laws.
University officials, though, hide behind an exception to the law, claiming that how they spend that money is a “trade secret.” Revealing booking costs to the public — and competing concert venues — would put them at a disadvantage when they negotiate the price tag for big acts, officials contend.
Columbus attorney Fred Gittes blasted a hole in that notion in a June 3 Lantern article.
The “trade secrets” exception is valid only if bands and their booking agencies treat those costs as confidential information, Gittes said. But some college booking agencies advertise those costs on their websites — even for bands that OUAB has brought to the university.
We weren’t surprised last week when officials stuck to their guns and refused to reveal Weezer’s payout. After all, we’re just students. When journalists at The Columbus Dispatch put pressure on OSU officials to release how much they paid controversial humorist Tucker Max to come to the university in May 2009, university leaders came clean. Lantern reporters had asked earlier, but that wasn’t enough. And even that glimpse of transparency apparently was a one-time deal.
But complying with the law can’t be a one-time deal. So I have a response to a reader who was aggravated by our article.
“Are you going to continue to bring this up for EVERY OUAB event?” the reader asked on our website.
Until we know how student money is spent, yes. Yes we will.
