Public meetings

Departmental faculty and committee meetings must be open and public, under the requirements of the Open Public Meetings Act, with notices for both regular and special meetings filed with the UW Office of Public Records and Open Public Meetings. Advisory appointment committees and ad hoc committees concerned with hiring of new faculty are exempt from these provisions. Departmental faculty meetings do fall under the requirements; however, the Act permits executive sessions of such bodies to evaluate or review the performance of employees. Therefore faculty meetings to evaluate colleagues for promotion, tenure, appointment, reappointment, or salary increase can be held in closed session (after proper notice and an agenda have been filed with the Office of Public Records) when, after the meeting is opened, an announcement is made as to the purpose and length of the executive session.

For more information, see the UW page on Open Public Meetings.

Prior to a faculty meeting, kindly review APS 1.5 to determine whether the meeting is subject to Washington’s Open Public Meetings Act (OPMA). If you have questions regarding whether or not a meeting is subject to the OPMA, please reach out to the UW's Public Records and Open Meetings experts at pubrec@uw.edu.

For meetings that are subject to OPMA, recording of the public portion of the meeting generally cannot be prohibited unless the recording is done in a disruptive manner. However, audio recording can be prohibited during executive sessions. Here are some potential talking points you might consider using in this scenario:

• "We are now entering executive session to [purpose of the session can be described in generic terms, e.g., “to evaluate a candidate for employment/promotion.”]. This portion of the meeting is closed and no audio recording is permitted."
• "During executive sessions where we discuss confidential personnel matters, Washington law requires all parties to consent to any recording of private conversations. Recording these closed sessions without everyone's consent would violate state law."
• "The executive session will last approximately [X] minutes. We will resume our open session at [specific time]."

For private meetings that are not subject to OPMA, audio recording requires consent of all participants under Washington law. Here are some potential talking points you might consider using in this scenario:

• "Welcome everyone. Please note that audio recording of these meetings requires the consent of all participants."
• "Any recording without everyone's consent would violate Washington law."
• "If you wish to record the meeting, please make your request known to all participants."