Ohio University Student Senate will hold an unscheduled meeting Friday night, along with votes to cut ties to legacy senate programs, the body's treasurer told The Post.
Ohio University Student Senate will meet Friday night, but the meeting will be procedural and will not include any votes or decision making, the body's president told The Post on Friday.
Megan Marzec's comments came minutes after The Post published a story from Carter Phillips, senate's treasurer, saying he had heard senate was holding an unscheduled meeting to cut ties to Take Back The Night, Pride Week and Athens Beautification Day.
Marzec clarified his comments, saying senate was only meeting as part of the body's orientation and that Phillips' comments were due to a "miscommunication."
Senate is not cutting ties or funding to those three events, she said. Instead, how the events are run will be changed at an administrative level but operationally, they will maintain their annual impact, Marzec said.
Phillips, who will not be in Athens until late Friday night, told The Post on Friday that he heard about the plans Thursday evening from another senate member, not from his fellow executives.
Phillips also told The Post he heard senate was moving to suspend the rules for a semester; Marzec said that is not happening at Friday's meeting. Instead, the rules and procedures are up for review.
"It's kind of sketchy, they went behind my back," Phillips said.
The move to change the events' administrative functions is consistent with a campaign pledge of Restart, the ticket Marzec and McDaniel ran on, to move some of senate's focus away from programming.
Phillips ran on the ONE ticket. Restart candidates won 21 of 34 elected positions on senate after a year of scandal for the body.
The three events are routinely some of the largest on campus. In 2012, for example, over 800 people volunteered for Athens Beautification Day, according to a previous Post article.
Ryan Lombardi, vice president of Student Affairs, said he was not informed about the meeting. Lombardi and Jenny Hall-Jones, OU's Dean of Students, are senate's advisors and typically attend all senate general body meetings. Those meetings have routinely been held every Wednesday night during the school year.
"I have not been involved in any discussions or made aware of any proposed changes," Lombardi said.
Phillips told The Post over the summer that he believes Marzec and McDaniel want to abolish senate's constitution. Marzec did not confirm that this summer, instead saying she believes the constitution is undemocratic in its current form. The body will not be discussing suspending the constitution at the Friday meeting, she told The Post on Friday.
"Everyone has been invited to student senate orientation," Marzec said. "We've been training people how to have a meeting. How to organize. This is a mandatory two days of training and whether people chose to attend is based off their personal lives."
This is a developing story. Stick with @ThePostCampus for updates.
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