As of Sunday, former Ohio University Student Senate President Nick Southall’s likeness has been removed from a collage of placards bearing the names and images of senate’s executive staff outside its third floor Baker Center office space. Anna Morton, though not officially sworn in as president, has already moved up a rung from her vice-presidential post, becoming the de facto president.
Unfortunately, Southall’s legacy isn’t as easily erased for Ohio University alumni, students and staff. His final mark as Student Senate president — spending time in a St. Petersburg, Fla., jail while on a university-sponsored student trip to Ohio’s Beef ‘O’ Brady’s Bowl — was a punchline, picked up by media outlets including The Huffington Post and Business Insider.
Southall put Ohio University’s name in the news for the wrong reasons. As the university continually works to move past its party-school image, the arrest of its most prominent student official for disorderly intoxication swiftly unraveled that progress.
In one drunken evening, Southall did more to damage the university than he did to improve it during an entire semester in office — a semester in which senate found itself doing little more than scrambling to save face following Southall’s social media gaffe early in the academic year.
Whatever credibility Student Senate might have once had as a professional and efficient entity — or résumé booster for students hoping to establish a political career — has been gutted. Southall’s indiscretion damaged Student Senate’s reputation on campus and the university’s reputation worldwide.
The role of the Student Senate president is to represent the students of the university, and that’s exactly what Southall failed to do in Florida.
We look forward to moving on from senate’s setback, and we hope the student body’s new leadership will do what Southall failed to do in office and on his trip: be a role model to students on campus and positively represent OU.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of The Post’s executive editors.
