Ohio University is certainly justified in paying top dollar for qualified faculty and administrators, and if market trends stipulate it, unconventional perks may be necessary. But, instead of reacting to the market, OU's decision to give incoming First Lady Deborah McDavis a $25,000 salary is instead a trend-setter, and is far too generous -in other words, completely unnecessary.
That is not to say that McDavis is not without a great deal of educational expertise, and could prove to be an asset to the university. She can boast of a 34-year English-teaching career at both the high school and college level. She even said she considered continuing to teach; a job that, if taken at OU, would have made her more than deserving of a competitive salary. As it is, her experience should allow her to perform the duties of first lady ---traveling, hosting, participating in community relations and acting as a public advocate for the university ---well.
However, there is little precedent to pay McDavis for the duties of first lady. No school in the Mid-American Conference pays their first lady except for Miami, and that is just $1 a year in order to qualify her for liability insurance, according to the Associated Press. Paula Whetsel-Ribeau, wife of Bowling Green President Sidney Ribeau, would also fall into this category, but she holds an administrative position at that university and is paid for that job, not for her place as first lady.
One cannot really blame the McDavises for accepting the university's all-too generous offer, although former First Lady René Glidden said she turned down a salary from OU. However, when first-year President Roderick McDavis is already making roughly $20,000 a year more than his predecessor ($275,000 to Robert Glidden's $256,420), to pay an additional $25,000 to the two-person McDavis package seems excessive.
In recent months, OU has not once but twice paid for things that they had always gotten for free. First, it decided to pay David McCullough $30,000 for his appearance at commencement, and now will pay $25,000 a year to the first lady, a sum that even she said she was surprised to get.
These expenses would be very hard sells in booming financial times, but with OU raising tuition to or near the maximum allowed every year and coming up with things such as technology fees to extract more and more from students, these decisions reflect very poorly on the fiscal sense of Ohio University, and they must be seriously questioned.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of the editorial board. Send comments to posteditorial@ohiou.edu.
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