Athens City Council says Student Senate has not reciprocated efforts to meet.
Every Monday night, a group of legislators meet in the Athens City Building, 8 E. Washington St., to discuss and pass laws often affecting the everyday lives of those in Athens.
Two days later, another group of representatives meet weekly in Walter Hall, discussing matters that affect the student body on campus at Ohio University.
The two groups — Athens City Council and OU Student Senate — share similarities both in function and influence, but bids for the bodies to formally meet together have failed to materialize for years.
City Council members have long expressed interest in sharing a joint meeting with Student Senate to open up communication, but they say the interest may not be mutual.
Representative Chris Knisely, D-at large, said she first heard the idea of such a meeting when Councilman Kent Butler, D-1st ward, proposed it a few years ago at council’s annual session with OU President Roderick McDavis.
Last Wednesday, Knisely sat in on a senate meeting with Councilman Steve Patterson, D-at large, and other members of the Athens-OU Joint Police Advisory Council.
The meeting included the introduction of a proposed amendment to Athens’ infamous nuisance party ordinance. The effort would increase fines for rambunctious partying, while downgrading the penalty from a criminal offense to a civil offense.
Knisely said she was encouraged by her interaction with the senators.
“I was impressed with the Student Senate and their interest (in the advisory council),” she said. “I was very impressed by their participation.”
But if a formal joint meeting were to take place, Knisely said she’d expect Council President Jim Sands or Clerk of Council Debbie Walker to lead the way.
Walker said council members have made several efforts, but she was clear about why they fell apart.
“The other party wasn’t interested,” she said of Student Senate, adding that space and scheduling conflicts contributed to the dilemma.
After trying to sort out those curveballs, she said, senators never got back to city council members.
But Isaac Smith, vice commissioner for senate’s governmental affairs committee, said that in his past five years of involvement on Students Defending Students, the student organization that sponsors Student Senate, he never heard anything about City Council wanting to organize a joint meeting.
He did admit, however, that at the time City Council purportedly began discussing the possibility of a joint meeting, Student Senate was undergoing an organizational transition by combining their City and County Commission with their State and Federal Commission, and that most communications between senate and council went through then-Government Affairs Commissioner, Gyles Allen.
But Smith said that current ties between the university and the city negated the need for a joint-meeting between senate and council, although he said senate would consider it if council made the request again.
“The city and the university really are getting along better,” he said.
Patterson said he thinks a joint meeting would be a good opportunity for students to ask legislators about how the city operates and discuss laws, like the nuisance party ordinance, in greater detail.
But he said it would take the initiative of Student Senate for a formal meeting to finally get off the ground after years of anticipation.
“If Student Senate wanted to do something like that, all they’d have to do (is reach out),” he said. “I’ve never had somebody from Student Senate reach out to me and say ‘Hey, this is something we’d like to do.’”
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