A silent summer from the Student Senate president has resulted in a lack of the promised communication
After winning in last spring’s Student Senate election, Megan Marzec received an email from Ohio University President Roderick McDavis. He congratulated her on her victory, along with an offer to work together.
Marzec never replied to that email. Nor did she contact McDavis all summer, the president’s office said Tuesday.
“The entire summer passed without any communication from the Student Senate,” said Stephanie Filson, an OU spokeswoman speaking on McDavis’ behalf. “President McDavis has never received a personal email from the president of the Student Senate requesting a meeting or inviting him to an open forum.”
Now, Marzec says she will “meet (McDavis) on a monthly basis, at the very least.” That comes after The Post published an article Tuesday saying Marzec has been unhappy with past meetings, and after she was informed of the comments from McDavis’ office Tuesday evening.
She declined to comment on any past correspondence between her and McDavis. During her campaign for senate’s presidency, she said she would talk with campus administrators, including McDavis, to make university decisions more transparent for students.
Marzec previously said her past meetings with McDavis — when she was a campus activist, who was at one point arrested while protesting an OU tuition increase — were unproductive. She also said “he was invited to meet with us during our open forums, which he did not attend.”
“(At) the beginning of the student struggle at OU was when we found out very quickly that it’s not about having better and more direct communication with administration,” Marzec said in a previous interview.
Filson said McDavis has only been invited to one senate event, a meet-and-greet last spring between senate and OU administrators. McDavis was planning on attending, but a change in date to the “hastily scheduled event,” kept the president from attending, Filson said.
Traditionally, senate’s president reaches out to McDavis’ office to schedule the meetings, Filson said.
Prior to Tuesday, the lack of working to schedule meetings did more than break a tradition as long as McDavis’ presidency. It would have removed what McDavis has called a key element of the shared governance model: meeting regularly with senate’s president to hear directly from the elected voice of undergraduate students.
“The president takes this dialogue seriously and has historically made every effort to make himself available on a monthly basis expressly for this purpose,” Filson said. “It is unfair to claim a lack of participation on the president’s part …”
Anna Morton, president of senate last spring semester, said communication with McDavis as the student body president “offers information exchange and a chance to voice concerns on many aspects involving the university, and hopefully find clarity in the needs of the students and the university.”
Senate’s first meeting of the year is Wednesday at 7:15 p.m. in Walter Hall 235.
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