Students at Ohio University's Student Union General Assembly voted for their top three priorities after expressing their concerns.
Before the Ohio University Student Union fights for solutions, it asked to identify the campus's most pressing problems.
After leading protests against tuition increases and the leasing of Ohio University President Roderick McDavis’ new home last year, members of the OU Student Union selected their new campaigns on which to focus their efforts this year.
With about 100 people in attendance Thursday night in Schoonover Center for Student Union's first general assembly of the year, members chose student worker unionization as its top priority for the fall semester.
“We have to be able to pull the levers back and say we’re not going to allow the status quo to continue,” Will Klatt, former OU student and community organizer, said to the approving snaps of Student Union members.
Klatt, who presented the student worker unionization proposal with Casi Arnold, an OU student, and Ryan Powers, a junior studying philosophy, started off by asking which of those in attendance received a paycheck from OU. A majority of the members raised their hands.
Other priorities included a campus-wide sexual violence study wanted under the larger umbrella of promoting the end of rape culture. Mandatory cultural competency classes were also called for along with divestment from all investments Bobby Walker, an OU junior, called "socially irresponsible," including fossil fuels and private prisons.
The group spent three hours proposing, discussing and voting on eight different proposals that were later combined into four.
The only proposal not chosen was the Real Food Challenge, which calls for OU to use locally-grown food.
F--kRapeCulture members Rachel Baker, a sophomore studying social work, and Sasha Gough, a sophomore studying creative writing, presented on fighting rape culture.
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Gough, talked about the convicted rapist at Hocking College, Trent Mays, from the 2012 Steubenville High School rape case and how it is “really too close to home.” Their presentation called for better education for OU staff members on reporting and preventing sexual assault, campus-wide alerts about sexual assaults and robust access to psychological services for all students.
Another one of their demands, Baker said, was for the administration to be upfront about how many sex-related crimes have been reported on campus.
Olivia Wallace, a senior studying visual anthropology and a previous Post photographer, presented on cultural competency classes. She said she wants freshmen and transfer students to take a cultural competency class to “make sure that OU is becoming global leaders and not just have a stupid mission statement about it."
The general assembly meetings will take place once a month in Schoonover and the Student Union’s weekly meetings will continue to take place in Ellis Hall on Thursdays.
Jacob Chaffin, a graduate student in critical studies, moderated the event and Tyler Barton, an OU alumnus from 2012 and founding member of Student Union, assisted.
“This is kind of an exciting event because three years ago we started the Student Union,” Chaffin said.
Thursday’s was the "first meeting of this sort" for the Student Union, Barton said.
“The Student Union now has democratically determined priorities that give it a direction to go forward collectively and collectively fight for these things and more,” Barton said.
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