Members of Graduate Student Senate will use their Wednesday meeting to respond to "culturally motivated hatred" on campus. Members of GSS will vote on a resolution to form a task force that will create a video highlighting the atmosphere at Ohio University.
After the idea of the video was suggested at its previous meeting earlier this month, members of GSS decided to get together to take a “more of a multimedia-platform approach to it, rather than our more traditional press release kind of thing,” Alex Burke, vice president of finance, said.
The resolution is sponsored by Colleen Carman, Christopher Glick and Tianyi Cai, none of whom serve as members of the executive team.
“We, as the exec. team, actually had no idea that this task force was even being considered,” GSS President Ian Armstrong said. “We are happy to see that there is a grassroots effort in Graduate Student Senate to get these issues pushed forward.”
Carman, the Women’s Affairs Commissioner, came up with the idea to form the task force during the previous general body meeting.
“I believe it is important for GSS to respond to this issue with a message that is available to the entire Ohio University community,” she said in an email. “I suggested the idea during our last meeting at GSS, after which Tianyi and Chris approached me with interest in writing a resolution. We realize that the incident at the graffiti wall is not the only message of hate that is circulating here, so we hope to address all the '-isms/-phobias' in our video.”
GSS also vote on a resolution to appoint a new academic affairs commissioner, since the previous commissioner, Spencer Smith, took on a different role as vice president of communication.
In addition to voting on the resolutions, the body will have two discussion points. Armstrong said he hopes to discuss with the body what topics are a priority for the senate to discuss with OU President Roderick McDavis, who is tentatively scheduled to attend the Nov. 1 GSS meeting.
Additionally, Armstrong said the body will discuss Milo Yiannopoulos, a conservative commentator and journalist who will visit campus in December.
“There have been protests at a number of events on his tour lineup, and we as an executive team feel the need to at least briefly mention that a tour stop will likely be happening here at Ohio University,” Armstrong said in an email.
Members of the executive team also hope to begin pushing their upcoming event, OHIO Leaders, which will take place Nov. 1 in the Walter Rotunda. OHIO Leaders is a commemorative event to honor the life of OU graduate and former U.S. senator George Voinovich. He served two terms as Ohio governor and graduated from OU in 1958. He died June 12 at the age of 79.
“He exemplified what it means to be a leader, especially coming from the Ohio University community,” Burke said. “All three of these people had different relationships with Senator Voinovich and now are leaders in their respective fields. We’re very excited and have been putting a lot of into it.”
