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Board of Trustees postpones final budget presentation

By Danielle Keeton-Olsen | Mar. 12, 2014

Ohio University’s Board of Trustees will break a recent tradition at Thursday’s meeting by postponing the presentation of the final FY 2014-15 budget.Instead, the board will begin its meetings, after an open government training session, with a joint academic and resources committee meeting on prioritizing OU’s financial needs.Discussion will include different tuition increase scenarios for the 2014-15 academic year, although the final decision won’t be made until the board’s summer meeting.They are as follows:No increase, which would give OU $1.26 million to invest in programs toward academic and college needsA 1 percent increase, which would leave $2.56 million to investA 1.5 percent increase, which would leave OU with $3.23 million to investThe extra time to discuss budget options will give trustees the chance to spend more time considering the implications of increasing the tuition, said Peter Mather, board secretary.“I expect very rich discussions in the Thursday meetings about these important issues,” Mather said in an email.The joint committee will also discuss the “Transforming OHIO” plan — a term the university uses to describe its large projects, including the Capital Improvement Plan, or planned construction; the Total Compensation Plan, which is an effort to make all OU salaries more comparable to positions in other Ohio industries; and the $100 Mil. Investment Strategy, aimed at collecting money for specific academic programs.“Our March meeting will provide valuable opportunities to engage trustees in a discussion about Ohio University’s vision and strategic direction as we forge new ways to be entrepreneurial and support transformative learning experiences for our students,” OU President Roderick McDavis, said in an emailed statement.Academics Committee:At the academics committee Executive Vice President and Provost Pam Benoit will provide an overview of the Honors Tutorial and the Graduate colleges. She will provide a similar update on the Office of Information Technology and the Office for Institutional Equity, detailing the offices’ goals and priorities.The board will also discuss the Completion Plan, which aims to increase enrollment by 0.5 percent each year and implement the guaranteed tuition plan by Fall 2015.Resources Committee:The resources committee meeting will begin with an assessment of OU’s endowment assets based on a national survey of higher education institutions through NACUBO-Commonfund Study of Endowments.The board will also receive an annual update on the institution’s debt capacity, and discuss three recommendations for addressing it:Take on debt and accept a temporary high credit ranking to work on projectsTake on debt incrementally in order to maintain credit rankingsLimit borrowing to projects prioritized in OU’s misswion, which often are self-supporting by their own revenue, such as Residential Housing projectsFacilities will then present its plans to begin discussing possibly limiting or removing vehicle traffic on Park Place to create a “pedestrian-friendly” walkway.The discussion is still in preliminary phases, but if the board votes in favor of McDavis continuing talks of the Park Place street study, facilities will take plans to city officials for input, because it is Athens property, said Shawna Bolin, director of University Planning & Space Management.“Every single thing we do for every planning study … will be thought of with the community, not just the OU community but the local community as well,” Bolin said.The items on the consent agenda (which is approved all at once by board members) include:OU’s Investment Policy, discussed at the March board meetingTwo corporate resolutions related to investmentsSchematic design for Boyd Dining Hall, Schoonover Center Phase 2, and OU-HCOM ClevelandConstruction projects for Allen Student Help Center, College Green exterior painting and landscape design, The Convo, Crawford and Mackinnon Hall roof and gutter replacements, Templeton-Blackburn Alumni Memorial Auditorium UpgradesDublin Campus Permanent Utility EasementThe University Completion PlanThe Faculty Compensation PlanProgram review of the Computer Science Technology Program for OU Chillicothe, Lancaster and Southern campusesEstablishment of the Doctorate of Philosophy in the Translational Biomedical Science Doctoral ProgramPhysician Assistant Program name change to “Master of Physician Assistant Practice”Graduate Student Senate constitution revisiondk123111@ohiou.edu@DanielleRose84 

The Post

OU paid less for lastest bowl bid

By Chad Lindskog | Mar. 12, 2014

Although Ohio failed to win its third consecutive bowl game, expenses for Ohio football’s four-day trip to St. Petersburg, Fla., in December totaled less than the team’s previous two postseason trips, according to a report released by Ohio Athletics last Tuesday.Of the $469,147.08 in total expenses for the Bobcats’ trip to the Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl, Ohio University paid $32,642.08 out-of-pocket from the Post Season Opportunity Fund — a $120,000 annual allotment from the General Fee. The total is less than half of the $78,569 OU pulled from the same pool in 2012 for the AdvoCare V100 Independence Bowl, according to a previous Post article.“We’re going to start making money off of (bowl games),” said Tom Symonds, Ohio assistant athletic director for media relations. “There’s going to come a time when we get increased funding from the league to go to these bowls — don’t be surprised if you see a couple years down the road that we’re making money off (games).”Ohio Athletics received $400,000 in payout from the bowl in addition to $36,505 from ticket revenue from the game. The decrease in money pulled from the Post Season Opportunity Fund was a result of an increase in ticket revenue compared to 2012, when Ohio Athletics brought in $23,876 in Independence Bowl ticket sales.“From where we were, we’re spending far less money to go to these bowl games,” Symonds said. “We’re getting better bowl deals. … Five years ago we weren’t getting that ($400,000) guarantee.”OU also sponsored a bus trip for about 350 students, who for $50 apiece were transported to and from Florida, stayed one night at a resort and were given a ticket to the Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl. Expenses for the bus trip totaled $45,684, but OU made $13,800 of that cost back in revenues from students who bought tickets for the trip.Revenue for the student trip came from multiple sources. The Ohio Bobcat Club — a fundraising arm of Athletics — financed the largest portion of the student trip, donating $15,844.“We wanted to have our players know that our students are behind us … even down in Florida.” Symonds said. “When bowls see what we do with our student attendance and getting students to games, that’s a big deal to them.”The President’s Office Budget and VP Student Affairs Budget each paid $8,000 to cover the remaining costs of the trip, so the university wouldn’t lose money.According to a statement from Athletics, “The significant exposure received can benefit enrollment, fundraising, campus life and school pride to students, faculty, staff, alumni and friends.”Athletics had taken until the first week of March to release its bowl game expenditure report because it was waiting to receive final transportation costs, Symonds said. Past bowl expenditure reports have been issued in a similar timeframe in years past, and representatives from the Ohio Bobcat Club and Athletics marketing department did not return requests for comment. Ohio lost the Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl to East Carolina 37-20 on Dec. 23. The game was the Bobcats’ fifth consecutive postseason appearance and Ohio is one of 21 programs to play five straight bowl games.“Just like a cross country runner that is able to go to the NCAA tournament and compete in the nationals, — and we’ve got five wrestlers that are able to go to the nationals and compete — we’re in the business to provide those opportunities for student-athletes.” said Dan Hauser, Ohio senior associate athletic director for external operations. “When they have the chance to compete in the postseason, we’re going to support those opportunities.”cl027410@ohiou.edu@ChadLindskog

Bekki Wyss

Hope for Humanity: Cybersexism edges women out of online communities

By Bekki Wyss | Mar. 12, 2014

“All of my social media sites were flooded with threats of rape, violence, sexual assault, death. And you’ll notice that these threats and comments were all specifically targeting my gender,” Anita Sarkeesian said of her battle with cyber harassers, one of whom developed a game for punching her face into a bloody pulp, in her 2012 Ted Talk. Sarkeesian, a feminist pop culture critic perhaps best known for her “Tropes vs. Women” YouTube series, will speak Thursday in Baker Theatre at 5 p.m. Part of the Law, Justice, and Culture Center’s series on Critical Resistance in the Digital Age, Sarkeesian’s presentation focuses on the unprecedented scale of cybersexism she faced after launching a KickStarter campaign to raise money for a series of videos examining common representation of women in video games. Sarkeesian’s experience is far from unusual for women with significant Internet presences. In “A Woman’s Opinion Is the Miniskirt of the Internet,” left-wing journalist Laurie Penny recounts her experiences with direct threats made to both her and her “school-age sisters” as a result of her job. She writes that as a woman, “having (an opinion) and flaunting it is somehow asking an amorphous mass of almost-entirely male keyboard-bashers to tell you how they’d like to rape, kill and urinate on you.”Here at Ohio University, we’ve seen this phenomenon manifest itself as members of F--kRapeCulture were contacted on personal phones and social media accounts by men’s rights activists threatening to teach them “how it feels to be really raped,” as well as anonymous OU Confessions tweets saying FRC members “just need to be fked hard.” We’ve seen groups organized around harassing the supposedly “man-hating feminist” Dean of Students Jenny Hall-Jones and making an OU student falsely associated with the Court Street incident delete her social media presence to deter the threats.Amanda Hess’ piece “Why Women Aren’t Welcome on the Internet” suggests that the solution offered to the aforementioned student is almost universal: delete your accounts, modify your Internet use, and ignore the hate speech. “Don’t feed the trolls” is the cliché advice given to those who experience Internet bullying, as if this were an adequate response. Sounding suspiciously like the supposed rape prevention advice which recommends women don’t wear x things in y places, our conventional coping strategies for Internet harassment are neither progressive nor feasible in the digital age.Anita Sarkeesian’s story has a happy ending. Raising more than $120,000 for her series, she continues to produce content for Feminist Frequency that both critiques existing video games and imagines media that could make the gaming community a powerful cultural safe-space open to all. Hopefully, that possibility exists for the rest of us as we graduate into an Internet culture still much more hostile to those who are aren’t straight white men than we are prepared to admit.Bekki Wyss is a junior studying English literature. Have you experienced gender-targeted harassment online? Tell her about it at rw225570@ohiou.edu.

Riley with Hundos, Method Air and Ghost Stories

Skull stage set to unite bands with Athenian, jazz history

By Dylan Sams | Mar. 12, 2014

Friendships developed over years of playing shows together connect the bands playing at the Skull this Thursday. Riley, a Dayton band, will be visiting Athens for the first time since last October, and over that time they have switched from a quartet to a trio, made up of drummer Colin Pauley, bassist Kyle Moore and guitarist and vocalist Eric Bluebaum. Hundos, from Columbus, and two Athenian bands will join them: Method Air and Ghost Stories. Riley has been on the same bill as Kevin and Sean Hundley of Hundos after first playing in Athens with them years ago, Bluebaum said. At that time, Hundos, made up of the Hundley brothers, was known as Zapaño, a progressive jazz-rock band.“(After) we played, we became friends and ever since that first show we just have developed a cool bond,” Bluebaum said. “Athens has always been a cool, receptive place for us.” Riley and Hundos are visiting as they travel around Ohio, and their Skull date is the first of four shows including Columbus, Cincinnati and Canton.Bluebaum said Riley’s music is greatly influenced by the three members and training in jazz music; two of the three studied jazz in school. “We’ve always been really focused on being a tight performing band, especially now with this line-up,” Bluebaum said. “We’re definitely practicing a more kind of a standard rock band formula where I’ll go in and add a lead (guitar part), but it’s not like we’re Led Zeppelin. … It’s more like we’re making up a song as we go along.” Hundos also has their music rooted in jazz, in that they’re creating improvised music that constantly evolves each time they perform. “For live shows, the core rhythms that make up our set pretty much stay the same, but our ideas are always changing and growing so each set is different,” said Kevin Hundley, bass player of Hundos.And as the band continues to develop its sound over the year they’ve been playing under the Hundos name. Hundley said he expects it to evolve even more. Although Ghost Stories has not played with Riley or Hundos before, it does a share a member, Sam Stanfield, with the other Athens band, Method Air. And Ghost Stories themselves grew out of jamming around in dorm rooms, said Charlie Walden.“We started as 3 of us writing songs in a dorm during Eric Bishop and I’s freshmen years and over time it has evolved to what it is today,” Walden said.ds834910@ohiou.edu@drussell23

The Post

Casa Nueva showcases young artists, organic snacking with month-long benefit

By Sophie Kruse | Mar. 12, 2014

For the month of March, Athens will be able to celebrate the artwork of many local children and support a local child care center.Sycamore Run Early Childhood Center will feature 61 pieces of art from its students for the entire month at Casa Nueva, 6 W. State St.The opening kicks off with an evening of events on Thursday. Open to the public, there will be art and activities for children, food and music. It will be followed by a show featuring Doxcity Live and Weird Science starting at 10 p.m.Sycamore Run, 74 S. Plains Rd. in The Plains, is a childcare center for infants to pre-kindergarten aged children that focuses on hands-on learning. The school features several outdoor play areas, nature trails and a vegetable garden.All pieces sold will benefit Sycamore Run’s food program. The Center is hoping to put in equipment so its employees will be able to prepare lunches for students on-site. They already provide local and organic snacks for students, some of which come out of the school’s vegetable garden, but want to be able to offer more to the children.“It’s awesome to be in such a supportive community and that we can work with Casa to celebrate our kids,” said Megan Weber, director of Sycamore Run.The show’s theme is loosely based around nature and the environment and is similar to the mission of the school.Many of the pieces are collaborations between students. Older students drew outline images, and the younger students were able to use them as linework. Parents and former students contributed other artwork in the show.Daniel Martino, art curator at Casa Nueva, was able to help with some of the pieces going into the show.“I did 16 pieces with the kids, and the teachers did a lot of them too.”Martino looks forward to the show, since his daughter has been going to the center since she was a baby.This is the second time Sycamore Run has done an art show at Casa.“Everyone is really excited about it,” said Megan Weber, director of Sycamore Run. “The first time, we only filled the Cantina room. This time, we’re filling all of Casa.”sk139011@ohiou.edu@kruseco

Princess and the Goblins

Athens theater group brings famed fantasy author’s work to the stage

By MERYL GOTTLIEB | Mar. 12, 2014

The authors of The Chronicles of Narnia, The Lord of the Rings, A Wrinkle in Time and Alice in Wonderland all cite George MacDonald, who is considered a pioneer in fantasy literature, as a major influence.Local community theater group The ABC Players will bring one of MacDonald’s fantasies to the Stuart’s Opera House stage Thursday with its adaptation of The Princess and the Goblin.Celeste Parsons penned the play version, titled The Princess and the Goblins, about a decade ago because of her fondness for the book, which she said she read as a child and enjoyed.Parsons, the director of the play, said she kept the Victorian English language of the original piece, which was published in 1872.The story follows Princess Irene, who teams up with Curdie, a young miner, to save the kingdom from the evil goblins with the power of love, magical thread and song.Tatum Lovsey, 12, plays Princess Irene and said she is excited to do her first “more professional” production and that she enjoys being her character.“It’s interesting to be a princess and a heroine at the same time,” she said. “She’s a princess but she’s also very brave. … It’s a really fun and good experience.”As antagonists to Lovsey’s protagonist, the goblins are grotesque beings that live underground and detest the sun and song. It will be up to Dharma Pook, a first-year student at the Tri-County Career Center cosmetology school in Nelsonville, and her team to make these goblins ugly.“We’re doing a lot of distortion with the makeup: big noses, big, sunken eyes with big ugly hair,” said Pook, head of makeup and hair for the play. “For the goblins, uglier is better.”Pook’s interest in doing hair and makeup in the theater prompted The ABC Players to team up with the Tri-County Career Center after she contacted the troupe to look for opportunities to gain experience in the field.Parsons said she hopes the collaboration will continue for future shows.“There were a number of times when we can use a little extra something with the face or hair,” Parsons said. “It’s a wonderful thing to draw other members of the community into the activities of a theater group because that’s one way we can expand the whole notion of community theater and live theater.”mg986611@ohiou.edu@buzzlightmeryl

Panelists debate pot legalization

Panelists debate pot legalization

By Taylor Maple | Mar. 11, 2014

Whether panelists and audience members were pro-legalization or not, they all had passionate stories and opinions Tuesday night at the Amazing Blazing Marijuana Debate in Baker University Center Theatre.

The Post

Letter: Ohioans should do their research before voting

Mar. 11, 2014

As Ohioans begin gearing up for the 2014 election, many are weighing their options for both viable Democratic and Republican candidates who are running for and seeking re-election. While much of the attention and spotlight will be focused on the Kasich and Fitzgerald gubernatorial election, another key Ohio position is up for re-election: the seat for Ohio’s secretary of state, which is currently held by Jon Husted. But many talking heads and large media outlets will try to persuade you that Husted does not deserve to get re-elected. I find it odd that all of these big talking heads, from states like New York and Massachusetts (which do not have early voting), are criticizing Ohio’s 29 days of early voting. Perhaps these hypocrites could address their own states’ voting opportunities before rushing to explain how bad Husted is doing, especially because he is the first secretary of state to mail absentee ballot applications to every registered Ohio voter. Before making your decisions for which candidate you will vote for, go beyond the talking heads and do some independent research. You may be surprised at what you find.

The man behind the art

The man behind the art

By William Hoffman | Mar. 11, 2014

Chris Biester, sweating bullets on the Porch Stage at the 2013 Nelsonville Music Festival, with a guitar hanging around his neck, a towel in one hand and a bottle of generic cold syrup in the other, holds the bottle up for the audience to see, yelling “Tussin, the medicine of the uninsured.”

Panelists debate pot legalization

Panelists debate pot legalization

By Taylor Maple | Mar. 11, 2014

Whether panelists and audience members were pro-legalization or not, they all had passionate stories and opinions Tuesday night at the Amazing Blazing Marijuana Debate in Baker University Center Theatre.

The Post

New firm consults on aggregation

By Olivia Bower | Mar. 11, 2014

Electric aggregation efforts in Athens County will soon begin to move forward as the Athens County Commissioners hired a consulting firm at a meeting Tuesday.

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