Information Concerning PCC Employee Emails Referencing Jared Loughner

May 6, 2011

Earlier this week, Pima Community College (PCC) through its attorneys voluntarily turned over approximately 630 pages of records to Pima County Superior Court Judge Stephen Villareal.

The submission of records to the court is related to an action brought against PCC by Phoenix Newspapers Inc. regarding its request for release of employee emails that reference Jared Loughner.

During a hearing on April 29, PCC offered to turn over the documents to Judge Villareal for his review.  All of the documents submitted to the court were created while Loughner was still a student at PCC.

On a related topic, PCC has received dozens of public records requests for emails that were sent to or from College employees on or after January 8, 2011, and that reference Loughner. 

A search of the employee email database for post-January 8, 2011, emails referencing the word “Loughner” yielded nearly 16,000 pages of such emails.  Many of these emails contain media articles about the January 8 shooting. The vast majority of these and other post-January 8, 2011, emails have been or will be released to the media outlets that have requested them. 

A small percentage of the post-January 8, 2011, emails, however, are not appropriate to release because they constitute student records protected by the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, because they involve purely personal communications that are unrelated College operations, or because they are communications that are protected by the attorney-client privilege.

Accordingly, each and every email has to be reviewed to determine whether it can be released or whether all or part of the email must be redacted.  The redactions then have to be made and a log of all redacted records, including the basis for each redaction, must be prepared. 

To date, PCC has released approximately 4,000 pages of post-January 8, 2011, employee emails referencing Jared Loughner.  All of the emails that have been released so far were generated during the first five days after the tragedy.

More than 12,000 pages of emails for the remaining days of January 2011, still need to be reviewed and, as required, redacted.  Pima Community College is working diligently to process these remaining emails for release.

CONTACT:
A. Rachelle Howell, Assistant Vice Chancellor for Marketing,
(520) 206-4850