The president is acting like a "expensive, petulant child."
To the Editor,
I’m sure The Post is expecting a fair amount of anger over its bizarre arrangement with Ohio University President Roderick McDavis, publishing McDavis-penned op-eds in exchange for a 24-hour grace period on criticizing those opinions. Personally, I am significantly less angered by the fact that a Post staffer agreed to the terms of this deal than by the fact that McDavis requested it in the first place.
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Surely the man had an inkling that such an relationship would be inappropriate, and if he had none, what business does he have presiding over a university prized for its journalism school? The fact that McDavis apparently backed out of a meeting with a Post reporter after the paper unknowingly broke the terms of this arrangement shows just how immature and vindictive OU’s president can be.
Ironically, the breakdown of the McDavis-Post treaty was apparently initiated by an op-ed in which the university president ruminated on the tenants of leadership. Not his own leadership, of course, but that of Student Senate. Roderick McDavis himself behaves less like a leader and more like an expensive, petulant child who will throw a temper tantrum at the slightest inconvenience.
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My hope is that The Post quickly finishes the business of beating itself up over this error and starts beating up on the real error at Ohio University; the presidency of Roderick McDavis.
Jesse Bethea is a 2014 Ohio University alumnus.
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