The South Dakota Board of Regents won’t reveal if any other staff members besides two at the University of South Dakota were told to change their email signatures to comply with its enforcement of a new communications and branding policy passed in December.
Two administrators who work with the Native American population at USD (John Little, director of Native recruitment and alumni engagement, and Megan Red Shirt-Shaw, director of Native Student Services) posted on their personal social media accounts about how they were asked to remove their pronouns and tribal affiliations from their email signatures in March.
Little said on Instagram and X that he received an email March 13 with a written warning for including his tribal affiliation, “Standing Rock Dakota,” and his pronouns, in his email signature. He said the email stated if he didn’t remove his tribal affiliation and pronouns from his email signature, he’d face suspension from USD, “and then there would be a decision made about termination,” according to his social media post.
Red Shirt-Shaw said on Instagram that she received an email March 16 stating she was in violation of the BOR policy for including her tribal affiliation, which she said is “Oglala na Sicangu Lakota.” If she didn’t comply, she would be issued a formal written warning from Human Resources, her post states.
Both staff members’ posts were shared around social media and in emails to the Argus Leader.
The Argus Leader asked SDBOR communications director Shuree Mortenson how many other SDBOR employees at each of six public universities it controls received emails, phone calls, in-person warnings or other forms of communications demanding they change their email signatures, and the reasons they were asked to change their signatures, such as pronouns, tribal affiliations or any others.
Mortenson responded that pursuant to South Dakota Codified Law, personnel information other than salaries and routine directory information is not subject to disclosure, and “we cannot comment on personnel matters,” she said.
In the past, the SDBOR has provided aggregated data similar to what the Argus Leader requested for the public, including things like COVID-19 case data broken down by campus and the number of staff versus students who were testing positive, Title IX data about complaints and more. All of this could also be considered personnel information other than salaries and routine directory information that the SDBOR has commented on.
Mortenson argued that the Title IX data, for example, was provided on a volunteer basis and wasn’t subject to open records laws. She also argued the information the Argus Leader requested, while anonymous, “could reveal personally identifiable information due to its limited scale and population.”
“We prioritize the confidentiality of our South Dakota Board of Regents employees and are unwilling to put employee information of this nature in a public forum,” Mortenson added.
But the idea that providing the raw number of employees affected by the change, without other identifiers, would constitute personal information “seems pretty far-fetched unless a requester also possessed some really strong psychic abilities,” Mike Hiestand, senior legal counsel at the Student Press Law Center, told the Argus Leader. The center helps journalists regularly fight for First Amendment rights and the public's right to know at the collegiate level.
Hiestand said unfortunately, the SDBOR’s denial looks to comport with the state’s open records law, “which is really one of the worst in the country with respect to providing citizens with a reasonable opportunity to understand what their government's employees − who have chosen to work as public servants − are doing on their behalf.”
David Bordewyk, executive director of the South Dakota NewsMedia Association, said since the Argus Leader isn’t asking for personnel information but for aggregated data, it’s a stretch for the SDBOR to say the request falls under the personnel exception in the open records law.
“The Regents employ thousands of people,” Bordewyk said. “I don’t think it’s a limited pool we’re talking about. I can’t connect the dots in terms of how that would lead to allowing someone to identify who these employees are, simply by providing this data.”
Bordewyk said data and facts are the “meat on the bone” that gives context to what journalists report, and that lacking data, like what the Argus Leader requested, prevents journalists from providing important context to stories.
“It’s another example in South Dakota where the open records law is used all the way to the moon and back by government officials to deny the public and journalists access to information,” Bordewyk said. “With more than two dozen exceptions in the open records law, it’s not an open records law, it’s just a menu for the government to deny the simple basic request, such as what (the Argus Leader) has made here.”
If you are an employee at one of the six universities under the Board of Regents who has received a warning or faced discipline because of your email signature, please reach out to us. We would like to hear from you about how this change affected you and your ability to do your job.
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