Two shootings, two separate public university responses–will the public demand the transparency it deserves?

UVA commissioned tworeports on the 2022 shooting that killed three of its students, then released them so heavily redacted that large stretches are unreadable. In fact, roughly fifty pages across the two reports contain nothing at all — a header, a page number, the alleged code exemption, and white space. What’s more, UVA took 28 months to publish their reports.

Old Dominion University (ODU), faced the same situation four months ago and did the opposite.

An ODU student opened fire in a classroom in March, killing Lt. Col. Brandon Shah. The Attorney General appointed outside counsel, same as at UVA. The report came out in July — four and a half months later, and almost entirely intact. One redaction, about two pages, covered a passage about a different student in an unrelated incident. The lawyers explained the redaction in a footnote, right where it appears.

Both are public universities in Virginia. Same laws. Same kind of tragedy. Wildly different responses.

Here's what UVA actually withheld: Quinn Emanuel's summary of its own actual findings were blacked out completely, though the recommendations built on those findings were published. Fifteen straight pages in one report, twenty-two in the other were blacked out. Even the tables of contents are redacted, so you can't learn what subject was withheld, only that something was. Four blank pages allegedly describe the changes UVA made to its threat assessment procedures after the shooting. These were exempted on security grounds, not privacy grounds. Yet in contrast, ODU published its full timeline, its emergency alerts, and all twelve of its recommendations without invoking a security exemption once.

UVA used language in its executive summary indicating it was compelled to do this. Such terms as Prohibited. Must. Had to. Legally barred. are used. But UVA wasn’t compelled to do this. Virginia's student-records provision doesn't order anyone to withhold anything; it says the university may release the information at its own discretion. What’s more, President Jim Ryan said as much under oath in 2024, testifying that UVA could have released the report – and chose not to.

There is one real difference between the two cases, and it deserves saying: ODU's shooter died at the scene, while UVA's survived and refused to waive his privacy rights. That's one genuine legal constraint UVA faced and ODU didn't. 

But it doesn't explain redacted chapter titles. It doesn't explain hiding what University fixed after reviewing drafts of the reports. It doesn't explain publishing conclusions while exempting the things they rest on. And most of all it doesn’t explain why UVA didn’t take certain threat assessment actions vis-a-vis the perpetrator prior to the shootings.

Buried in UVA's own summary is a line intended as reassurance: most of what it withheld had “previously publicly reported” anyway. If that's true, the privacy interest it upheld in its fifty pages of redactions doesn’t really hold. But the kicker is that no one can actually check either, because UVA doesn't say which information was made public, or where it appeared, or how much "most" covers.

Three outstanding students died on that bus. Two more were wounded. Nearly four years later, ODU has shown that a Virginia university can fulfill its public responsibility of transparency. Why won't UVA tell its own community what happened? What is trying to be hidden? The Commonwealth deserves better from its flagship university.