OT: Dave Brandon: "I suggest you find a new team"

[SU2NASA]

First, sorry for starting a new thread when I already had the Fire Hoke one going, but I felt this deserved its own. This is a situation that arose on MGoBlog a few weeks ago, and has been an ongoing saga ever since.

The original story was that an MGoBlog member, in response to an email from Michigan AD Dave Brandon, received the following response to an email written after the Minnesota game:

Subsequently, based off of this accusation, MGoBlog submitted a FOIA request to the University of Michigan and received the response that this email did not exist. However, there has been ongoing work to confirm or repudiate the email. MGoBlog is now reporting that this email is authentic, and many others similar to it that have been sent by Dave Brandon.

Back when I was in school we had the Buzz "Get a life" quote, but this is a different level, particularly since this is the AD himself, personally responding to students, alumni, and fans. And it doesn't appear that this is an isolated incident in the very least.

MGoBlog post on the story (I highly suggest reading it in its entirety):
http://mgoblog.com/content/david-brandon-i-suggest-you-find-new-team

Not that I needed the convincing, but given this is all true, the university needs to act swiftly.

 

[javadoc]

Link to MGoBlog story is a JPG.

 

[SU2NASA]

Link to MGoBlog story is a JPG.

Fixed now.

 

[OttoMets]

Wouldn't mind seeing the initial e-mail. Just like with Buzz, though, I'm sympathetic. The "we'll do fine without you" bit is gratuitously snarky, but sports fans are wackos; the e-mail was probably way out of line. I feel bad for the administrators who have to see e-mails from these losers every day.

 

[SU2NASA]

Wouldn't mind seeing the initial e-mail. Just like with Buzz, though, I'm sympathetic. The "we'll do fine without you" bit is gratuitously snarky, but sports fans are wackos; the e-mail was probably way out of line. I feel bad for the administrators who have to see e-mails from these losers every day.

Read the link - it's just one of many emails from Brandon (the original is contained in the story). For the Athletic Director at the University of Michigan to be personally responding to students, alumni, and fans in this manner is completely and totally unacceptable.


This is my favorite:

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

 

[sufandu]

Some people don't understand that they have a product that people aren't required to purchase.

 

[OttoMets]

Read the link - it's just one of many emails from Brandon (the original is contained in the story). For the Athletic Director at the University of Michigan to be personally responding to students, alumni, and fans in this manner is completely and totally unacceptable.


This is my favorite:

Part I:

Part II:

Part III:

Well...

Yeah, you're right, he's gone overboard. Better off not replying than pulling a McDonald, especially to rather innocuous e-mails.

 

[Full_Rebar]

Looks like Brandon will be finding a new team very soon.

 

[SU2NASA]

Well...

Yeah, you're right, he's gone overboard. Better off not replying than pulling a McDonald, especially to rather innocuous e-mails.

The most damning part may not even be the emails themselves, but rather FOIA.

What about FOIA?
I have been informed that Michigan erases Brandon's email regularly to prevent responsive requests by a person who worked in the athletic department for three years.

A FOIA request for an email sent or received by Dave Brandon would end up going to his secretary. If the date of the email is given, his secretary would not even need to look to see if the email exists. All of Dave Brandon's emails are manually deleted from his university email once they are about one month old. They have been since he started. Since it is done manually, sometimes it's actually a little later, sometimes it is a little sooner, especially if the email is something that may be FOIAed.

But it was explained to me that the whole point is to avoid responding to a FOIA request (like this one). I've been following this email/FOIA issue, and after I spoke with one of my friends in the athletic department, we agreed that we would be shocked if that email still existed in his email, even if it did exist at one time.

This is why a specific request filed by an MGoBlog member turned up nothing. I have two FOIAs in with the department currently, one for six days of mail to and from two email addresses, the other for DaveBrandonAD@umich.edu and dabran@umich.edudating back to January 1st of 2013. The department wants to charge me $385 for the first request and $1215 for the second—if those are at all proportional than there's approximately three weeks of email sitting there.

Is this legal? Our local law-talker BISB weighs in:

--------------------------------

If a state employee (such as, for random example, a University Athletic Director) deleted email exchanges, he was probably in violation of Michigan's FOIA law. Emails sent by an employee in the course of his official function are considered public records. The University of Michigan, and its employees, have an affirmative obligation to maintain public records:

MCL 15.233(3): "A public body shall protect public records from loss, unauthorized alteration, mutilation, or destruction."

That duty extends to the individual employees. Intentionally deleting emails as a means of preventing them from being FOIAed would be a violation of MCL 15.240(7):

"If the circuit court determines... that the public body has arbitrarily and capriciously violated this Act by refusal or delay in disclosing or providing copies of a public record, the court shall award, in addition to any actual or compensatory damages, punitive damages in the amount of $500.00 to the person seeking the right to inspect or receive a copy of a public record."

"Capricious and arbitrary" essentially means without cause and in an abuse of power. The University of Michigan is the one subject to the penalty, but the employee is the one who committed the violation.​