Update: The Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition has canceled this event due to concerns over the spread of COVID-19 coronavirus.

Boulder-based author Jon Krakauer, who fought to access university records when reporting on campus rape and sexual assault in Montana, will speak on a panel during the Colorado Freedom of Information Coalition’s Sunshine Week.

Krakauer’s 2015 book, Missoula: Rape and the Justice System in a College Town, explored a series of sexual assaults at the University of Montana. He attempted to access records about the discipline of a quarterback who faced allegations, culminating in the Montana Supreme Court’s 2019 ruling that he was not entitled to that information.

“When universities want to deny public access to information that might blemish their reputations, they routinely claim that FERPA (the federal student privacy law) prevents them from disclosing such information – even when disclosure is plainly warranted. In many instances, the suppressed records concern sexual-assault complaints,” Krakauer wrote in The New York Times in 2016.

Sunshine Week, from March 15-21, calls awareness to the importance of government transparency. Gwen Florio, editor of the Missoulian and former Denver-based journalist, and Montana attorney Mike Meloy will also join the panel on March 19 to discuss whether student privacy laws also improperly mask the operations of public institutions. Jeremy Jojola, an investigative reporter for 9NEWS, will moderate the discussion.

Tickets to the event at the University of Denver are available here.