This is a Kentucky Lantern story republished under Creative Commons. See more from Kentucky Lantern here.
The Kentucky Lantern filed an appeal Monday with the state Office of the Attorney General seeking records from the University of Kentucky related to the departure of the president of the now disbanded University Senate.
The appeal is in response to UK’s denial of the Lantern’s request for records of email exchanges that preceded the university signing a $375,000 separation agreement with DeShana Collett, who had been a tenured professor in physician assistant studies.
A provision of the legal settlement between UK and Collett required her to withdraw her request for the records. She had sought emails among UK administrators that mentioned her.
Collett played a prominent role last year in opposing a change to UK’s internal governance and presided over a vote of no confidence in UK President Eli Capilouto.
She and others had warned that faculty would be stripped of decision-making power over academic decisions. But the UK Board of Trustees approved the new governance plan proposed by Capilouto. It recommended creating a faculty senate, which is now in effect, to replace the University Senate.
In the final meeting of the University Senate, Collett presided over a vote of no confidence in Capilouto. Collett later wrote to faculty members warning of acts of retaliation by the UK administration after the vote. Collett warned that the provost’s office had taken control of the University Senate’s online voting system and would have access to how individual Senate members had voted on Capilouto.
Joe Childers, Collett’s attorney, told the Lantern last month that after the controversy Collett was “subjected” to an environment at UK that made her uncomfortable.
Childers filed requests on her behalf for records pertaining to her, including emails among administrators. UK denied Collett’s request for the records but the attorney general’s office issued an opinion partially in her favor in February. In that opinion, the office ruled that UK violated the state’s Open Records Act because procuring the documents “did not place an unreasonable burden” on UK and it had denied records related to the requester, Collett. The attorney general’s office said that UK did not violate the act “when it withheld privileged attorney-client communications” in accordance with state law.
Childers previously told the Lantern that after the attorney general’s opinion UK agreed to provide the documents by July 31. However, the settlement agreement was reached before the documents were provided to Collett.
The Lantern is seeking the same records that Collett sought in its appeal. UK denied the Lantern’s request, saying in a letter that “the Attorney General has already ruled that the records are exempt as preliminary and/or attorney-client privileged” both within the scope of the Febuary opinion and outside of it.
However, contrary to what UK wrote in the denial, the attorney general’s office did not cite the provision protecting preliminary records in its ruling on Collett’s appeal.
UK spokesperson Jay Blanton said in a statement to the Lantern that state law “distinguishes between the rights and privacy of an employee and the rights of the public, in this case a media outlet.”
“An employee is entitled to otherwise exempt records that relate to the employee to preserve their privacy interests,” Blanton said. “In contrast, the public — a media outlet such as the Lantern — is not entitled to materials that were exempt for a public request. Thus, the University appropriately refused to disclose preliminary materials or materials that were exempt for a public request.”
However, Michael Abate, who frequently represents news outlets seeking public records, called UK’s stance in this situation “shocking” in a statement to the Lantern.
“They’ve paid nearly $400,000 to a former professor in part to keep these very records secret. I can’t recall another time where a settlement was conditioned on the withdrawal of an Open Records Request after the Attorney General said the records must be released,” Abate said. “To make matters worse, the University misrepresented to the Lantern what the Attorney General previously held — suggesting it won on an issue the AG declined to address. That only heightens the need for the public to see what’s in these records. What is the University trying so hard to hide?”
In recent years, UK has gone to court with Kentucky news outlets over denied open records requests, including the student-run newspaper, the Kentucky Kernel.
This article appears in Sep 1-30, 2025.