A student asks what Ryant Taylor has done as the LGBTQA commissioner this year. "Students at this university cannot afford representatives that don’t listen."
To the Editor,
We have a question: When is Pride Week? We did not see it listed on a calendar anywhere. Where are the resolutions regarding Ohio University’s LGBTQA community? We did not see any this year. When was Ryant Taylor planning on filling the four extra seats on the LGBTQA commission? We never saw him reaching out to students for this. What has Ryant Taylor done as the LGBTQA commissioner this year? We have not heard a thing.
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This is problematic. In the beginning of this past school year, we were both on the LGBTQA Commission. Having put on a successful Pride Week the previous year, we wanted to set aside our differences and work with Commissioner Ryant Taylor. Pride Week only happens once a year and is an experience that all students in the community and outside the community deserve to experience. However, it became apparent that he was not willing to work with us. Around Week 3 was the first contact Ryant had made with us. He never managed to nail down an actual meeting time for a commission meeting. We sparsely met and after a while, Ryant stopped communicating with us at all. Further, when we did meet and gave Ryant our ideas for Pride Week and other events, he was entirely unresponsive. Both of us had ideas on how we pictured Pride Week. We wanted to receive feedback from others within the community on what they wanted to see during Pride Week and other legislation and ideas for the year. It was either his way or not at all. We thought he was open to conversation, but he was uninterested in our suggestions. To us, this did not seem inclusive. After realizing that Ryant was not up for compromise, we left the commission. Ryant’s apathetic attitude allowed senate to miss out on quite a few opportunities for collaboration with the LGBTQA community — among them: a peer mentor program within the community, representation from the gender spectrum on senate and other educational opportunities between senate and this community.
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Ryant’s attitude toward us demonstrates the current senate’s inability to compromise and hear from students. If you do not align with its goals, you are dismissed. Students at this university cannot afford representatives that don’t listen.
Paige Klatt is a junior studying specialized studies at Ohio University. Abby Fairbanks is a junior studying communication sciences and disorders-speech, language and pathology.
