Updated June 8, 2017
In response to the two largest public records requests in its history, the University has completed its release of emails and electronic documents gathered during the independent investigation of academic irregularities led by Kenneth Wainstein.
With today’s eighth and final posting of over 500,000 pages, the University has released more than 1.828 million pages of emails and documents from the investigation since October 2015. Those pages came from over 1 million documents. Click here to access all eight batches of Wainstein investigation records, which are available in a searchable format.
The records originated from a database of about 1.7 million unique electronic records compiled by Wainstein’s firm, Cadwalader, Wickersham & Taft LLP, as part of the report released in October 2014. The database contained about 5 million total pages of documents.
Carolina is committed to complying with the North Carolina Public Records Law and other state and federal laws. The University must review every page of a document to protect privacy rights and, if necessary, to redact or withhold confidential information.
The News & Observer and The Daily Tar Heel filed separate requests – posted here and here, respectively – before the Wainstein report was released seeking investigation records.
In conjunction with the release of the Wainstein report, the University previously published 1,129 pages of exhibits and supplementary materials including 229 pages of interview summaries; materials from the Academic Support Program for Student-Athletes; redacted emails from former and current employees; enrollment data about independent studies in the Afro and Afro-American studies department; and documentation of efforts to contact uncooperative witnesses. Refer to https://carolinacommitment.unc.edu/reports-resources/supplements/ and https://carolinacommitment.unc.edu/wp-content/uploads/sites/350/2014/10/UNC-FINAL-REPORT-EXHIBITS.pdf
For more information about the University’s commitment to disclosing public records, refer to https://nextrequest.unc.edu/, an online platform created in 2016 after a review of best practices across the country to make it easy to request public records and to see how the staff responds.