Daxton “Chip” Stewart, Professor at Texas Christian University

Professor Stewart is a nationally recognized expert on public records and government transparency. He walks us through the basics of public records laws and values and emphasizes the importance of government transparency to a functioning American democracy. Professor Stewart analyzes the growing trend towards less government transparency and the tactics and technologies governmental bodies use to keep information out of the public domain. Stewart discusses transparency and accountability in the context of higher education and college sports and offers his insights on why universities and athletics departments operate largely in a culture of secrecy. Professor Stewart also explains a recent class assignment in which his students served public records requests on Power 5 schools to obtain information on game-day beer sales. The results may surprise you. Find out who achieved the status of “skunky beer schools” for their lack of transparency.

00:00 Introduction and bio

2:12 Public records overview

3:55 Values underlying open records laws

7:05 Assignment for students on beer sales at games

12:12 Tactics government entities use to avoid providing public records

15:11 “Skunky” beer schools

17:08 Importance of institutional culture and climate on transparency issues

20:10 Public vs private entities and “quasi-governmental agencies”

24:30 Big Ten public universities’ decision in 2020 to move discussions over fall football into the private Big ten communications portal

34:00 Use of student records exemption by public universities in requests for NIL-related documents

37:44 The influence of competitive advantage-disadvantage in athletic department secrecy

41:53 University marketing, branding, and reputational interests taking priority over transparency

46:46 Advancing communications technologies and their use to avoid creating public records

52:28 Future of government transparency

Note: This episode was recorded on February 24th, 2023. Hyper-linked timestamps are available on our YouTube channel.