Ohio University’s Student Union will be hosting a general assembly for students to discuss issues and plan a way to voice their concerns.
Ohio University students have a chance to voice their concerns and to vote to bring change Thursday night during OU Student Union's General Assembly.
“The goal of the general assembly is to get as many students together as possible to participate and discussing what we want out of OU and democratically decide how we can collectively act to get those things,” Ryan Powers, a member of the OU Student Union and a junior studying philosophy, said.
The first general assembly was held in April, but Powers said “this will be a different format” than the previous assembly.
“The format is going to be basically we invited everyone to submit a proposal,” Powers said.
Any person who submitted a proposal is allowed to give a five minute presentation at the beginning of the meeting and talk about why the Student Union should take on a specific campaign, Powers said.
The deadline to submit proposals was Tuesday.
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“After those back-to-back presentations, everyone is going to discuss the debate and vote on what the Student Union is going to prioritize for their goals this semester,” Powers said.
Through the assembly, Powers said Student Union is hoping to set its agenda for what the group hopes to accomplish this semester.
In an effort to include as many people as possible in the general assembly, the event will happen once a month, Rachel Lewis, a junior studying communication studies and a member of Student Union, said.
“They are going to be recurring every month to give people an opportunity to participate in democratic processes who can’t necessarily be on a more intensive organized committee all the time,” Lewis said.
Those general assemblies will be where Student Union will “make more big picture decisions,” Lewis said.
The weekly Student Union meeting will continue to take place and members will discuss the details of how to implement decisions made at general assemblies, Lewis said.
Powers said that Student Union wants several people to be a part of the general assembly discussion.
“We are going to need as many people as possible to participate and how we actually go about getting the things that we want, so we are hoping that by including as many people as possible in the discussion and the decision about what to do," Powers said. Then we are going to have those people also working toward achieving the things we voted on doing because the only way we can transform our inherently undemocratic university structure is by building an alternative democratic structure that has the power to transform the university."
Student leaders will be in attendance at Thursday’s assembly.
“It's important for students to go to the General Assembly because it's important for students to stay involved and to leave behind a better campus than they inherited,” Graduate Student Senate President Carl Edward Smith III said in an email.
Student Union hopes the first general assembly meeting will be a springboard for the future.
“I hope that the decisions that we come to are what’s best for us, and I think that they will be considering the way that we go about making them,” Lewis said.
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