The Ohio Supreme Court has ordered a private university and a student journalist to try to resolve the student's lawsuit asking the college to turn over arrest records and other information.
Anna Schiffbauer, editor of a news website at Otterbein University in Westerville, contends the university police department is a public office covered by the state's open-records laws. Student journalists at the liberal-arts school have battled Otterbein over the release of records since the campus security force became a full-fledged police department of state-certified officers in 2011. Otterbein has argued it's exempt from public-records laws as a private institution and that federal law requires it to protect certain information about students from release.