FOI Files: How student journalists helped shine a light on a university withholding important records

By Lauren Lifke

My journey with public records started in 2023, when I was a student at the University of New Mexico just starting out as a reporter for our student newspaper, the Daily Lobo. I, like much of the student body, wondered why we frequently weren’t getting campus safety alerts until hours after the fact. Little did I know that this investigation — and the curiosity of a few student journalists — would spark a yearslong series of stories, a proposed state law and a nearly $200,000 settlement. 

At the time, I was a brand-new reporter for the Daily Lobo, and so was fellow junior Lily Alexander. Together, we sought to find out how the campus crime alerts work, and why students weren’t feeling properly informed. Each Tuesday and Thursday that semester, we would leave our writing class, buy two overpriced iced coffees, and sit down in the school library to research, plan and conduct interviews with university officials.

After a week of diligent research and reporting, Lily and I published a story that showed our university wasn’t complying with the Clery Act, a federal law that requires colleges and universities to report data about crimes that happen on or near their campuses. This got attention from the public, and the university improved its recordkeeping two days after publication. But our reporting on the lack of transparency at UNM didn’t stop there.  

One lawyer read our work and sought out our contact info. He found us on social media and tipped us off on a case he was working on, in which the UNM Police Department didn’t provide any body-worn camera footage for an interaction with students who were accused of committing a crime. The lack of footage raised this lawyer’s eyebrows.

In order to understand the significance of this lack of transparency, you also have to understand our open-records laws here in New Mexico. We often rank among the worst for a lot of things — crime, child welfare, etc. — but we are one of the best when it comes to transparency. 

Our Inspection of Public Records Act allows any member of the public access to public records of governmental entities, with few exceptions. This includes body-worn camera footage. In 2020, the state also passed a law requiring all police officers to record footage of every interaction they have with the public.

With that context, the lawyer knew it seemed like UNMPD either didn’t have/use body-worn cameras, or they weren’t disclosing the footage that was, by law, public. Lily and I dug in some more, and we found a loophole in the law that excluded university police departments from the bodycam requirement. We reported this, and after a few months, lawmakers introduced a bill to fix the loophole. Though the bill didn’t pass during that legislative session, the public’s attention was enough to prompt UNMPD to acquire body-worn cameras.

But for Lily, the hunt didn’t stop there. At the very beginning of all of this — when we were on a roll with making nonstop IPRA requests out of sheer curiosity — she had requested records related to UNMPD’s weapons inventory. She wanted to write a story about the inventory. Given UNMPD’s history of violent response to protests, it was in the public’s right to know which weapons officers had on them when interacting with the public. 

UNM denied handing her the records, citing potential for the records being used to “facilitate a terrorist attack.” 

But with the help of local journalists and mentors, she sued them — thus beginning a long journey that continued after she became editor-in-chief of the Daily Lobo, and eventually graduated. 

By September 2025, she had the weapons inventory and a portion of the $200k in settlement money from the university. 

The body cameras, the weapons inventory and the Clery Act are all just a few examples of information the public needs to help make informed decisions. When 12 students were arrested at UNM during the April 2024 Palestine protests, UNMPD hadn’t yet acquired cameras. The only footage available of the arrests was that of a security camera and state police.

These are just a few examples of the many ways student journalists have helped out their communities. That’s not even to mention when students at the Daily Lobo broke the news of protestors’ occupation of the Student Union Building, drawing attention to the genocide in Palestine, from all the way in New Mexico. 

Now, in 2026, the student reporters there broke the news on another transparency lawsuit just a few weeks ago.

So that leaves me with one question for the student journalists who might be reading this: Is your university complying with the Clery Act and with your state’s transparency laws? If you aren’t sure, then it might be time to find out.