Ohio University students on both sides of Issue 2 have been campaigning to convince voters to check their box Nov. 8.
Student organizations such as the College Republicans have urged students to support Issue 2, a veto referendum for Senate Bill 5, a bill that would limit collective bargaining rights of state employees.
Crescent Gallagher, College Republicans’ former vice president and Graduate College senator for Student Senate, said he supports SB 5 because of how it will affect the university’s budget.
“If it passes, (the university) will be better because we’ve been at a status quo for progress that hasn’t been working,” he said. “If it doesn’t pass, levies will appear that will fail and that will start laying off people. If SB 5 doesn’t pass, it will affect the university negatively.”
SB 5 would cause university employees’ contracts to be re-evaluated, and Gallagher said he hopes this would force administrators to “come together for merit-based pay.”
This change would also help students’ educations, he said.
“New contracts will have to be made,” Gallagher said. “(Teachers) will be paid based on what they deserve, not only because they’ve been there for five years.”
Gallagher added that, despite what voters think, he hopes they will do research before going to the voting booths.
“I hope people take a look at the bill and educate themselves,” he said. “We can’t go back; we have to go forward and make changes. In Ohio, our market is not there anymore. We have to change things.”
At the same time, several student organizations are urging students to take the opposite stance and vote down Issue 2 and SB 5 at the polls.
Tyler Barton, a senior studying chemistry and a student organizer for OU’s chapter of the anti-SB 5 organization We Are Ohio, said he disagrees with the changes that SB 5 would cause.
“It’s generally an unfair attack on middle-class folks who work very hard to make people’s lives better,” he said. “The public sector is almost entirely a service for the economy. It is incredibly unsafe in that it attacks firefighters and police officers.”
Barton called attention to the Ohio University Police Department and Athens Fire Department, and their response to the arson fire last week in True House, where he serves as a resident assistant.
“SB 5 has potential to hurt our campus safety,” he said. “If firefighters had less staffing levels, it’s not unreasonable to say that those response times will go up and more students would be hurt.”
Barton also said he believes students will not be willing to remain in Ohio after graduating and support the state’s economy if Issue 2 passes.
“It’s a lot harder to convince them to stay in Ohio when we are quickly becoming a state when the government obviously doesn’t care about public orders,” he said.
sj950610@ohiou.edu
