This column has been updated following the removal of Roger E. Ailes’ name from the WOUB newsroom.
This week I was actually going to weigh in on how it is a shame that the university is yet to rename WOUB’s Roger E Ailes newsroom. You know, I was going to. That was until McDavis announced that he had given back Ailes gift of $500,000 which is actually a phenomenal thing for the university to do given that that is an absurd amount of money to have your name on something.
Anyway, in record time, McDavis announced the renaming of the room and maintenance made record time in removing it probably right when the word left McDavis’s lips. Honestly, that was impressive how quickly the letters were scraped off from the walls.
Besides my affinity for when maintenance does things in a reasonable amount of time. I am for once pleased with how the university handled the situation, while I do believe his name lingered on our campus a bit too long, they handled the situation with grace in giving back his gift as well.
But, there’s a catch.
Our lovely center for communications, the Schoonover Center, is named after a donor who had some less than pleasant remarks about the students of Ohio University as a whole. Here are some highlights from his April 2nd email in 2015.
“I want to be on to express my outrage that we let a bunch of loudmouths and demonstrators who have probably never given a dime to OU and a bunch of newspaper reporters and university professors who have no idea or don't care what it takes to attract top notch Presidents to live in a small town like Athens.”
“It never ceases to amaze me how people who have no responsibility for the operations of Ohio University or providing a suitable house for the President and his family and to serve as the official home for the First Family of OU.”
“I think we should handle it the same way the Democrats do every time Republicans attack President Obama... They label them racists. So if you are worried about the petition by the Faculty just play the race card and call them racists and make them defend themselves! They pull that in Washington everyday!”
Yeah, we have a building named after this crass man.
Heaven forbid the students of our university be outraged by the fact that “bats” caused the McDavis family to move out of the home that every Ohio University president has historically lived in.
Would you rather we be a campus full of people who don’t speak up when they are outraged?
Here at OU, we have a faculty student body that refuses to play sheep when something happens we don’t agree with. So forgive us for not letting you play shepherd. That we haven’t given a dime to the university? I pay, and I know I pay, $20,000 some odd dollars to come here a year. Which is going to end up being around $80,000 I have paid to go here, so yeah, I have gave money to the university.
To say that the Park Place wasn’t a suitable place to live is farfetched. Have you set foot on some of these Back South residence halls lately? Park Place is Versailles compared to Back South.
Schoonover, let me address something real quick too, before you bash an entire political party as a whole, you should probably remember that the student body you are paying to have a building in your name use, is largely liberal. You not only complained about a “race card” but attacked what makes up a large chunk of this campuses political beliefs.
So, President McDavis, while I am thrilled with the decision to scrape Ailes name off our campus, the fact that we still host this man’s name on our newly renovated building shows that our higher ups are willing to look past anything if the money is there.
Chuck Greenlee is a sophomore studying adolescent-to-young-adult integrated language arts at Ohio University. How do you feel about the Roger Ailes dispute? Let Chuck know by tweeting him @chuckingaround.
