Confucius Institute Record Request

In December, the University of Michigan announced that it was ending its agreement with the Confucius Institute , a controversial language center funded by the Chinese government. There are approximately 100 of these institutes across U.S. campuses — one of which is at the University of Kansas, where I go to school.

In light of Michigan's decision to close their institute, I thought it would be prudent to see if KU officials have had any discussions about closing their institute, which has caused controversy in the past. On December 18, I filed an open records request for emails from KU's top administrators that contained the keyword "Confucius Institute", and on January 17, I finally received a quoted price to produce those records: $506.50.    

I'm a college student and currently working as a freelance journalist. I simply don't have the funds to pay for a request like this, even though I think the results could be of great public interest. So I'm asking for your help, not only to pay for this request, but to show public agencies they can't make requesters go away simply by charging a high amount for records about public business.