Student senate met Wednesday to discuss student safety and well-being through Ohio University’s Office of Health Promotion.
Taylor Bauer, assistant director of peer health education and empowerment, gave a presentation about the office’s purpose and mission.
“We really strive to create safe and healthy communities through OU, really hoping that students flourish so our focus is on primary prevention, skill building training, peer health education and trauma-informed practices,” Bauer said.
Bauer said a few main areas the office has a focus on pertaining to anti-hazing, violence and sexual assault prevention, mental health and drug and alcohol abuse.
The Office of Health Promotion offers many opportunities for engagement for students, such as training, presentations, initiatives, events and partnerships.
“Some of the main ways that you might connect with us or see us on campus, you will likely at some point see our peer health educators out and about on campus and tabling during different events (and) definitely stop by and chat and connect with them,” Bauer said.
The office plans to start a peer well-being network in February 2024. It’s designed to start conversations about issues affecting student mental health.
“The main goal of this network is really to provide opportunities for us to start talking about issues that are impacting student well-being, to give opportunities for students' voices to shine through and some of the programming that we do, and to just have a community level approach for it,” Bauer said.
Bauer explained to the senate how they can help boost support for the office by providing further outreach to as many students as possible.
In new business, the Senate passed resolutions that appointed an International Affairs commissioner and approved budgets for various events.
During the President’s report, President Megan Handle announced the room the senate had previously held meetings in at Walter 235 will be available for the senate to use within the coming weeks.
The meeting room was changed due to renovations and updates.
Handle decided to use her time to gauge how the rest of the senate felt about moving meetings from Walter 104 back to the senate's original meeting space.
Several points were brought up by senators for moving, such as the new seating having desks and more comfortable chairs, while some against the move said they had concerns about the lack of microphones.
Taking everything into consideration, no decision was made as to where senate meetings will be once Walter 235 is available again.
