Why Don’t We Know Podcast

In this special episode, we bring you a live taping of the first-ever Brechner Speaker Series, co-hosted by the Brechner Center for Freedom of Information and the Bob Graham Center for Public Service, featuring award-winning investigative reporter Jason Leopold, who has broken some of the top stories of our time using the Freedom of Information Act (FOIA.) Nicknamed "the FOIA terrorist" by government officials who are forced to answer his requests, Jason talks about ultimate transparency in government and in his own personal life.  He is the reporter who forced Hillary Clinton's emails to become public, exposed a religion test used by the U.S. Military, and illegal practices by big banks, which became an investigation known as the FinCEN Files. Host, Sara Ganim. Guests, Matt Jacobs, Hub Brown, Jason Leopold. 

In this special episode, taped live at SXSW EDU in Austin, Texas in March, we discuss how schools are bullying young sexual assault accusers into waiving their rights during school investigations into what happened to them. Title IX is supposed to protect students who allege sexual assault, but some schools are requiring their silence, and threatening discipline if they don't comply. It runs afoul of the law, many experts say, and led attorney Laura Dunn and the non-profit Equal Rights Advocates to pen a letter to the U.S. Department of Education, trying to get the Biden Administration to stop this practice from continuing. Host: Sara Ganim. Guests: Laura Dunn, Kel O'Hara.   

In April, President Joe Biden announced an infrastructure plan that includes removing and replacing all of America's lead drinking water pipes. It's an ambitious plan that would help millions of American children, and it was met with a lot of praise. But we couldn't help but wonder if this plan sounded too easy. Because as we've seen on a much smaller scale, sometimes it's really hard to know where all the lead pipes are. Host: Sara Ganim. Guests: Erik Olsen, Alex Stubblefield.

Depending on where you look, you can find a statistic that will tell you any number you want to see about how often students are bullied in school. Why is that? Why are bullying numbers all over the place? And how does it cause students to fall through the cracks? Host: Gabriella Paul. Reporter: McKenna Beery. Guests: Itea Aslanian, Deborah Temkin, Brooke Greier. 

In the season one finale of, we're unpacking a season full of secrecy in public education - answering the final 'WHY' of Why Don't We Know -- which is why hasn't FERPA been fixed? Host: Sara Ganim. Reporter: Conner Mitchell. Guests: Frank LoMonte, Paige Kowalski.

This was the most disruptive academic year in modern history, and we have collected very little data to help our students recover from it. This Extra episode tackles the question of Why Don't We Know how many students are actually attending virtual learning and which ones fell behind. Host: Sara Ganim. Reporter: Gabriella Paul. Guest: Paige Kowalski. 

When it comes to physical attacks on teachers in the classroom, it appears, we don't want to know. This episode explores the missing data regarding violence in the classroom and how it affects a school district. Host: Sara Ganim. Reporter: Angela DiMichele. Guests: Bill Gillard, anonymous teacher. 

We assumed that, since school shootings are such a known public safety concern, there would be really detailed data on how many weapons are brought into K-12 schools. But 15 states stopped us from seeing the mere number of guns brought to schools out of fear of violating privacy.

Host: Sara Ganim. Reporter: Camille Respess. Guests: James Buckley, Amelia Vance, Lee Hermiston, Clark Kauffman

From sexual assault, to school yard injuries, to public safety, to political campaign contributions to racial bias, a federal privacy law called FERPA is being used as a one-word, catch-all answer for any information a school doesn't want to share. Host: Sara Ganim; Reporters: Marianna Faiello, Camille Respess; Guests: Laura Dunn, Karen Truszkowski, Brett Sokolow, Kendall Ware, Samantha Brennan, Abigail Owens, Brooke Moore. 

Why Don't We Know how Title IX cases are handled at many universities? The answer is combination of two things: a real concern for privacy and the comfort of secrecy. Host: Sara Ganim. Reporter: Marianna Faiello. Guests: Liz Abdnour, Brett Sokolow. 

Government agencies everywhere, not just schools, are using COVID19 as an excuse for not sharing information. FOIA office phone lines were disconnected. Calls went unreturned. Emails unanswered. In this episode, we also explore how government agencies are misapplying the Health Insurance and Portability Act. You probably know it as HIPAA.Guests: Dave Cuillier, Terry Mutchler, Al-Amyn Sumar, Carolyne Hartley.

Off-campus housing is often the only choice for certain students attending college, but finding safe housing can be a real challenge. In addition, we discuss how private partnerships are leading to some major financial failures for public universities building new dorms. Host: Sara Ganim. Guests: Janet Maupin, , Bob Fitzsimons, Jessica Wood. Reporters: Brittney Miller, Tori Whidden.

It's estimated that 75 percent of public universities use non-profit foundations to do certain work in secret that would otherwise be done in public. Raising money from influential donors is one of the most common. Host: Sara Ganim. Guests: Alexa Capeloto, Miranda Spivack, Evan Johns.

It's designed to be hidden. Public universities are turning to private portals to shield information that otherwise would be part of the public record. Host: Sara Ganim. Reporter: Camille Respess. Guest: Paula Lavigne, Judith Wilde, Jim Finklestein.

Unconstitutional speech policies aren't just for college athletes. In the midst of a global pandemic, we found that resident assistants are also told they can't speak to the media without first getting permission. 

The ability to request records from public institutions is part of the law, and in theory, should take a few weeks, at best. But after nine months, when several universities hadn’t responded to some requests at all, we started calling to see what was going on. Host: Sara Ganim. Guests: Terry Mutchler, Dave Cuillier, Matt Reed.

Why Don’t We Know how to stop hazing deaths? It’s one of those sadly persistent stories, with no real progress being made toward a solution. Host: Sara Ganim. Reporter: Jessica Curbelo. Guests: Daphne Beletsis, Doug Fierberg, Walter Kimbrough, David Easlick.

There’s a hidden and deadly danger inside many public university buildings, but no one is talking about it, no one is regulating it, and it’s nearly impossible to find on your own. Host Sara Ganim interviews attorney Mike Robb about a case of a deadly reversal. Other guests: Erik Olson, Barry Castleman, Linda Reinstein.

Our research found that many major public universities have policies that silence athletes, robbing them of their first amendment rights. The policies are not only restrictive, they’re unconstitutional. Host Sara Ganim talks to Ramogi Huma, president of the National College Players Association, about the impact of this bad policy, and why no one has challenged it.

Ever since Junior Seau propelled the horrors of chronic traumatic encephalopathy into the general public, we’ve repeatedly heard a singular narrative from those in charge of the sport of football: The sport is safer than ever. But how do we know that?At the college level, we’ve never seen those raw numbers. And so Season 1 of Why Don’t We Know set out to find the answer. Are there really fewer concussions than there were a decade years ago?We asked 100 public universities across the country for their aggregate numbers — broken down by sport — for the past ten years, and if they didn’t have data for ten years, we said, that’s ok, give us as many years as you have. The answer is really unsatisfying.We still don’t know if head injuries are truly declining, and the reason we don’t know is that more than one third of the major universities that we asked —  major conference powerhouses in the Big Ten, Pac 12, SEC — they don’t know either. They don’t know because they’re not tracking it.

We expect government secrecy from the Pentagon or the CIA — not from our universities and our schools.But in many cases, institutions designed to protect our children are instead hiding critical information.It leaves us asking a lot of questions. One of which is simple…why don’t we know?Over the following episodes, we are trying to figure that out.