McDavis & Lombardi host open forums
Beginning today, two of Ohio University’s top administrators will devote another hour each month to field your questions, concerns and comments on, well, just about anything pertaining to student life.
OU President Roderick McDavis and Vice President for Student Affairs Ryan Lombardi will be posted up in the Honors Collegium on the fourth floor of Baker University Center from 3 to 4 p.m. to meet with students in the first installment of their new monthly Bobcat Coffee Hour.
In a meeting with McDavis and top members of the OU administration in September, we urged them to further explore ways to have open dialogue with our reporters and the rest of the student body. We further stressed that point in an editorial inspired by the meeting, headlined “Openness with admins is essential.” In it, we wrote that any time spent with our university’s top officials is valuable, as their opinions and choices dictate the goings on here on campus.
Now that we have more of that time — in addition to McDavis and Lombardi’s regular office hours — we encourage students to make the most of it. We also applaud McDavis and Lombardi for taking the initiative to become available to students in another venue.
In short, the more face time we have with our administrators, the better they are able to represent our needs when it comes time to make decisions that impact our daily lives. We urge you to attend — or at least stop by between classes. If the reasons outlined above aren’t enough to convince you, they also have coffee and cookies.
Obama’s comments on marijuana
For those unaware, President Barack Obama recently told The New Yorker he considers smoking marijuana to be a vice, but no worse than alcohol. With Colorado and Washington recently permitting the use of recreational weed, the law seems to be somewhat shifting along with public opinion.
In fact, for the first time, a Gallup poll from October found that 58 percent of Americans say recreational use of the drug should be legal. When Gallup first asked the question in 1969, only 12 percent favored that change.
Obama had admitted before he smoked when he was younger, but the comparison between weed and alcohol brings further question to the relationship between the United States and marijuana. The country’s prison population has skyrocketed in recent decades, and nonviolent drug offenses have contributed significantly to that increase.
A number of politicians, activists and pundits have contested that America’s war on drugs has been a failure and that alternative methods are needed.
At the very least we should take another look at how we do things — that or another toke, brah.
Tragedy at Purdue
Our hearts go out to the family of Andrew F. Boldt, the 21-year-old Purdue University student who was shot and killed shortly after noon Tuesday. Boldt — a senior and a teaching assistant — was allegedly targeted by Cody M. Cousins, a 23-year-old student who surrendered to police and was arrested under suspicion of murder.
We hope the students, faculty and staff of Purdue are able to recover from the tragedy that struck their campus. Boldt’s death is a cruel reminder of how quickly a life can be taken.
Appreciate your time on this Earth, love your friends and call your mother.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of The Post’s executive editors.
