Thanks to the clandestine nature of Budget Planning Council, graduate students are locked into a dispute as to whether the council promised them they would be exempt from paying a new $22 quarterly fee. Pete Wickman, president of Graduate Student Senate, says the Budget Planning Council made the promise at a meeting in the fall. Rebecca Vazquez-Skillings, head of budget planning and analysis, says she has no recollection of that discussion.
Normally, thanks to a little thing that we journalists like to call sunshine
public entities aren't allowed to forget because the media are present to chronicle what happens.
But at Ohio University, the sun does not shine on the Budget Planning Council. While minutes from the meetings are supposed to be posted online, minutes from nine of the 21 meetings held this year haven't been posted, and their content tends to be conveniently incomplete. Members are even encouraged to keep quiet about how other members voted.
Thus, the council members refuse to be held accountable for their actions. They are above the watchdog eyes of media. Given this aristocratic attitude, one might even wonder if they think they are above the people they are supposed to serve. And so now graduate students face a he-said she-said conundrum that would have easily been avoided if members of the press and public were permitted to see how the university decides to spend its money.
It's time for the council to start operating in the light of day. Budget Planning Council members should look at this dispute as an opportunity to discuss changes to a policy that reflects poorly on themselves.
But the odds are that nothing will change, because it seems only the public and press notice how badly the system is broken - it must be awfully dark in those meetings to obscure what is so obvious to everyone else.
Editorials represent the views of The Post's executive editors.
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Opinion
Budget Planning Council fails to shed light upon closed meetings
