As the Journal-World has reported, Public Employees for Environmental Responsibility — a government watchdog nonprofit that, in part, assists public employees in fighting for accountability and transparency in government actions — sued the BIE in late July after the bureau withheld hundreds of pages of records related to a previous Freedom of Information Act request.

PEER’s request, filed in April, was prompted by the Journal-World’s recent coverage of a group of Haskell students’ demands that a six-month investigation that purportedly took place on campus be made public. The students alleged that sexual assaults, embezzlement, theft and other crimes had been uncovered via a BIE investigation.