"To let you know before we begin, we did make this an open meeting," Student Affairs dean Corey King declared Tuesday afternoon, as he welcomed members of the search committee for FAU's first-ever assistant director of student media.
Thing is, search committee meetings are always open in Florida. It's the law.
But by the end of the meeting, King seemed to change his mind. At least temporarily. In this two-minute audio clip, King tells committee members to keep confidential the names of the candidates they agreed to interview by telephone next week.
A perplexed UP editor Karla Bowsher asks, "How does that work if this is a public meeting?"
"What do mean, how does that work?" King replies with ever-so-slight annoyance. "We can't put out that they're gonna get a telephone interview when I haven't even talked to them yet..."
"That doesn't matter," interrupts Robert Bailyn, a Communication professor and the only pro journalist on the committee. "It's a public meeting."
King sticks to his story for a minute. But then he realizes he's wrong and claws his way out. Or maybe he really did explain himself so poorly that both a pro and student journalist misunderstood him. Listen and decide for yourself.
