The protest hosted by Students for a Democratic Society on Friday raised a number of important issues, but the most vital was the demand for a restructuring of university government. The way Ohio University is governed is at the root of the controversies that have angered the university community in recent years, including last year's athletics cuts and this year's decision to cut 24 union jobs from Facilities Management. If the administration ever hopes to see an end to these controversies, it is going to have to reform the way the university is governed.
Where to begin? Because we are an American university committed to the liberal arts, our frame of reference should be liberal democracy. Our goal in restructuring university government should be to maximize the number of university community members involved in making decisions. Several SDS members have suggested that Vision Ohio should be rewritten with the participation of the entire university, and I agree: We cannot hope to go forward with a plan for OU's future without the active participation of the entire university community. As written, Vision Ohio is President McDavis' plan for the university's future; but what we really need is a plan for the university's future crafted by the entire university through elected representatives.
To begin rewriting Vision Ohio and generally working toward the goal of a more democratic university, the administration must give more power to the community and thus to its representative bodies, the various senates. The current consultative nature of these senates precludes the possibility that they will be able to have any impact on controversial decisions like the ones that have landed the McDavis administration in hot water. The Board of Trustees should begin by immediately implementing an open and transparent evaluation process for the university president, as both the Student Senate and Graduate Student Senate have requested. At a bare minimum, the administration should also immediately give the various senates a collective veto power over executive decisions. This variation on the veto proposal is more reasonable in that it would take more than one senate G
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Nathan Nelson
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