Ole Miss: No violations came from e-mails

But school refuses to release 31 of them, citing privacy laws

Ole Miss says it has found no evidence of NCAA violations in any of the e-mails sent to its compliance department when football coach Hugh Freeze, fed up with accusations shortly before signing day in February, tweeted a provocation for people to submit evidence of such misdeeds.

“In the interest of transparency, we can disclose that we have reviewed and considered each of the emails,” Ole Miss general counsel Lee Tyner wrote in a Monday letter to The Commercial Appeal. “Many of those e-mails repeat similar, unsubstantiated rumors. None of the e-mails provide first-hand information and none have led to any findings of violations.”

But as for releasing the e-mails themselves, well, that’s a different matter.

Some background: The school said it received 85 e-mails in response to Freeze’s tweet. It released 54 of them on Feb. 22 in response to The Commercial Appeal’s public records request for them — but withheld 31 as it continued to look into whether there might be something there. The newspaper’s request for the records remained in force; Tyner’s Monday letter was in response to questions about them.

The 31 provide “information that, if supported Hugh Freeze tweeted a provocation for people to submit evidence of recruiting misdeeds back in February. The school received 85 e-mails, but none have led to any violations.

or corroborated, could potentially lead to finding a violation,” he wrote.

Tyner wrote that the school denied the newspaper’s request for those e-mails on four grounds:

Its belief that the NCAA asks schools to keep information about possible violations confidential while looking into them;

A “reasonable expectation of privacy” to confi- dential informants;

Prevention of disclosure “under applicable Mississippi tort law protecting privacy and prohibiting the public disclosure of private facts”;

The Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act, a federal law that prevents schools from releasing educational records. (In the February release of 54 e-mails, the school redacted names of recruits, citing FERPA.)

Tyner said that if further evidence leads to Ole Miss finding a violation rooted in information in any of the 31 e-mails, it would self-report it and cite the e-mail as the source.

“Thus, if any of the emails ever lead to any finding of a violation, that information will be included in a public record,” Tyner wrote.

The CA’s request for all correspondence between Ole Miss and the NCAA concerning violations, a standard and periodic request the newspaper makes, was e-mailed to Tyner on Monday afternoon.