Hey, Ohio University. Welcome to day three of Homecoming week and our third “throwback” front. Today’s front page recalls the style of The Post in the 1978.
As we have been flipping through the pages of Posts from decades past, many of us have remarked at how similar things are today. Like I’ve written this week, some things have changed, but many remain the same.
Plenty of those changes are the obvious ones: fashion, colloquial expressions, cigarette advertisements, gas prices, etc.
But a few of the changes are more significant and more interesting.
I exchanged emails with P.J. Bednarski, who was editor of The Post in 1974-75, about the “crazy days” during his tenure at the university. He recalled anti-war protests and a relatively new “open visitation” dorm policy — which opened the door to coital engagements.
It was clearly a different time, and people often preferred that most things (like legs?) remain closed. But, Bednarski said, the then-university President Claude Sowle and his administration worked to remain open and transparent.
Bednarski said Sowle held a regular call-in show on WOUB, had a weekly press conference and had a regular open house at the president’s home.
Perhaps most impressive and surprising was that Sowle also instituted a public budget meeting, at which various university departments presented their case for their annual budgets.
“The open budget hearings were amazing. Everybody had to defend their departments, school, project, and students attended en masse. We assigned our theater critic for one day of it because it was so dramatic and funny,” Bednarski said.
Though Sowle didn’t like The Post, “the administration was pretty open and proudly so,” Bednarski said.
I’m not sure if the modern administration has an equal distaste for today’s Post, but I’m positive that things are much less open now.
Instead of open budgeting meetings, reporters are barred from the Budget Planning Council meetings of today. Instead, reporters speak weekly with representatives from the council under the supervision of a university media rep.
Times sure have changed, but our opinions about the importance of openness haven’t.
I think Bednarski put it best: “A university is supposed to foster dialogue not hide it.”
Ryan Clark is the editor-in-chief of The Post. Email him at rc348710@ohiou.edu.
