Dear Ohio University Community,
Many of you have already heard that at 2 p.m. today students, teachers and community members will gather on College Green to hold a demonstration against the university policy of maintaining Free Speech zones. This demonstration will be much more than a protest against the unethical regulation of free speech.
It is about a culture that has slowly crept onto our campus but has increasingly become a dominant ideology in many American universities. We are talking about the corporatization of our university and the consolidation of power within the hands of the few. The disregard of the teachers' and students' concerns and ideas has continued to be a pressing issue on this campus.
Democracy matters and directly impacts our lives. Democracy is not passive observation, or participation at sanctioned dates and places; it is to continually evaluate and engage events, policies and institutions that threaten our voices and ability to act.
We have been presented with an opportunity to truly shift the power relationships on campus, and we invite you to be a part of this movement. We would like to stress that this isn't a protest that we will participate in and then go back to our daily routines. We seek to fundamentally change the way in which our communities interact on this campus, and to make this university community more participatory and democratic.
Many of us at Ohio University have taken classes on the principles of democracy, on justice and on ethics, with the presumption that we will use the knowledge acquired in our classes to become more informed public citizens. This university has given us the skills to critically observe the situations around us, and to become advocates for ourselves the values we hold within our hearts. Yet this knowledge we acquire is nothing if not put into practice. Ohio University is a public institution that was set up with the intention of educating the students; without the students there is no university. The demonstration today doesn't belong to SDS; it belongs to you, the students and the community. I hope to see you on the green.
Will Klatt is a member of Students for a Democratic Society.
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Letter to the Editor
