Ohio University’s Faculty Senate convened Monday for its first meeting of the academic year, which included a discussion of the Roger E. Ailes Newsroom and enrollment updates.
The meeting in Walter 235 kicked off with enrollment updates from top officials and was followed by an announcement from OU President Roderick McDavis detailing his decision to remove former Fox News Chairman and CEO Roger Ailes’ name from the WOUB newsroom.
Ailes, an OU alumnus, donated $500,000 to the university in 2007 and agreed to pay the sum over the course of five years, according to a previous Post report. More than 20 women have accused him of sexual harassment, which caused him to step down from his position in July.
“In recent weeks our campus community has been interrupted by the Roger Ailes controversy,” McDavis said at the meeting. “The distraction from the teaching of the Scripps College of Communication has weighed heavily on my mind.”
Following the announcement, several faculty members thanked McDavis for his decision.
Prior to McDavis’ arrival, Craig Cornell, senior vice provost for Strategic Enrollment Management, gave updates on the university’s official enrollment data for fall 2016.
Cornell said the Class of 2020 has slightly lower enrollment compared to past years, but it is also the third largest freshman class in OU’s history.
“In a nutshell, the international market is highly, highly, highly competitive, as you know, and there’s a lot of noise out there and so we are going to start to ramp up our efforts,” Cornell said.
Part of the reason for the decline in enrollment, Cornell said, can be attributed to a decrease in international and out-of-state students. Compared to last year, there are about 30 fewer international students in the Class of 2020. Numbers for out of state students were not given at the meeting.
Student enrollment from Appalachian counties is up about 800 students, or 19 percent of the Class of 2020.
Enrollment across all of OU’s campuses, however, is up 140 students this year, totaling nearly 43,000. There are about 37,000 students on the Athens campus, Cornell said.
Officials showed enthusiasm as they reported an increase in the university's retention rate from students’ first to second year at OU, which went up 2.4 percent. Cornell said the increase is the most significant jump since 2002.
Other areas of improvement include the number of first-generation students and high school grade point average.
The number of African-American and Asian-American students also broke records for the university this year, Cornell said.
Two resolutions were set to be presented at the meeting, but after McDavis’ announcement one of them — about the Roger Ailes’ controversy — was scrapped from the agenda.
The second resolution is to assemble a task force to review OU’s naming practices for buildings, classrooms and other university properties.
The current policy has not been changed since 2003, Faculty Senate Chair Joe McLaughlin said.
“Since that time (2003) there has been a proliferation of naming spaces on campus that are not buildings but are classrooms, laboratories, conference rooms, meeting rooms,” McLaughlin said after the meeting. “It seems that this is largely donor driven, and while I think we want to do things to recognize our donors it seems… like the naming of things is part of the academic mission of the university and not simply the fundraising mission of the university.”
The resolution will be discussed further at senate’s Oct. 10 meeting.
