Last year, 62 percent of the 1,900 students who voted in the Student Senate election said they were unaware of the existence of the Budget Planning Council.
Despite that troubling statistic, BPC, which provides fiscal recommendations to Ohio University President Roderick McDavis, has quietly continued as usual this year and is set to hold its second meeting Friday.
Those meetings are still closed to the public.
During the past few years, BPC has made small steps to become more transparent — minutes are now posted sooner after the meetings than they used to be — but its members remain obstinately opposed to opening the meetings. Its leaders insist that it is not required to comply with the Ohio Open Meetings Act because it is not a decision-making body.
But a committee that affects what happens with students’ money should be fully transparent, whether it is required to be or not. This is especially true after three straight years of tuition increases — the most recent coming from a year with a substantial pay increase for top administrators.
Students have a right to know how their money is being spent and how those decisions are made. At the very least, those decisions have no business being made behind closed doors.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of The Post’s executive editors.
