The protests and subsequent arrests that occurred at Friday’s meeting of the Ohio University Board of Trustees were equally necessary and infuriating. Necessary, because the rising cost to attend OU absolutely must be addressed if we are to ensure that our school continues to provide an education of high quality at an affordable price. Infuriating, because of University Communications and the Board of Trustees’ failure to acknowledge that the protests and arrests occurred.
Protests, demands and inflammatory speech have proven necessary to gain attention and show how these tuition increases are affecting students. But whatever problems those methods may ease in the short-run, they typically fail to solve in the long-term. What we need now is reason, and truly productive discussion between students, faculty and administrators — and not just through their respective senate bodies.
Our university president and vice presidents are a group of intelligent, highly experienced people. Students should keep in mind that as transient residents at OU, we don’t always have the long-term vision that our administrators have worked for years to develop. But administrators must also remember that they are here to serve the university, and right now, we comprise the university.
They should also consider that tens of thousands of students and faculty members who hold or are pursuing degrees are a pretty fantastic resource to have and maybe one they could be utilizing more to plan the future of our institution.
I don’t hold the answers. I do believe one key step to giving students a more complete financial understanding of the university is to open Budget Planning Council meetings, or at least make their full minutes public.
President McDavis, Dr. Benoit, Mr. Golding, Dr. Lombardi, Dr. Shields and Mr. Benchoff: As the top administrators of this university, I believe you have a choice this week. You can decide not to press charges against the protestors and pledge to begin working with students and faculty to find more agreeable solutions to the university’s problems, or you can continue trying to brush this incident under the rug and prepare for a much more persistent confrontation. I implore you to choose the former. Most of the people you arrested are my friends, and I probably don’t have to tell you how determined we are to see a change.
Brian Vadakin is a sophomore studying Spanish at Ohio University and a former Post reporter.
