OU Student Union members elaborated on their plans for several topics brought up at last month’s general assembly.
From cultural competency classes and student worker unionization to locally grown food and fossil fuel divestment, many topics were discussed at the Ohio University Student Union’s General Assembly on Thursday night.
The nearly three-hour meeting aimed to expand upon ideas brought forward at the last general assembly Sept. 17.
Student Union voted to create the Real Food Challenge Committee, which will work toward having 20 percent “real food” in the dining halls by 2020.
Although the committee isn’t something everyone in Student Union will be required to participate in, members will lend their activism knowledge to the committee as it learns.
“We were talking about having our own committee, but also working with all the committees here,” Rachel Komich, an organizer of the committee and a junior studying English, said. “We’re small right now, and a lot of us don’t know how things work like you guys do.”
The committee plans to evaluate the food being served in OU’s dining halls and lobby in favor of more locally grown and healthy foods.
Student worker unionization continued to be another main topic of discussion. Student Union is focusing on the university’s call center, where employees solicit alumni donations over the phone.
“We will be asking what they’ve heard about the union and asking them to sign union cards,” Ryan Powers, a junior studying philosophy, said.
Since the effort to unionize the call center became public, the management has been cracking down on employee tardiness and asking Student Union members not to recruit people in the building, Powers said.
“They’re creating a hostile environment. They’re instilling fear in the workers,” Powers said. “They know if we succeed in this, the balance of power gets tipped in our direction.”
Powers said unionization should be more than having people sign a card and urged Student Union members to engage the people they talk to in the actual process of unionization.
“We also have to ask, ‘Do you want to get more involved?’ ” Powers said.
Grant Stover, president of the Sierra Student Coalition and former Post columnist, and Bobby Walker, a junior studying women's, gender and sexuality studies, gave a presentation about DivestOU, a committee to push for the university to divest from fossil fuels and prisons.
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“We are not only invested in, but we profit off of the burning of fossil fuels,” Grant said. “Which means in a sense that there’s not going to be an OU for future students.”
Grant brought up several universities that are divesting from fossil fuels and said students need to demand the university divest for there to be a real change.
“There’s the few minority schools that are doing it because they have good leaders,” Grant said. “But for the most part it is student-led campaign.”
Walker spoke about the need to divest from prisons, saying that they contribute to rape culture and harm those who could be better helped by rehabilitation.
Another goal Student Union is working toward is requiring OU students to take cultural competency classes.
Jolana Watson, a senior studying media and social change, and Olivia Wallace, a senior studying visual anthropology and former Post photographer, presented on the topic.
Watson said if students already had an understanding of systematic oppression, it would be easier for Student Union to talk to them about issues like rape culture and fossil fuel divestment.
Watson also cited examples of cultural ignorance she said exist on OU’s campus.
“You’d be surprised how many people have to move out of their dorms because people are saying the n-word in their mods,” she said. “We had so many campaigns and posters (about Halloween costumes) and people still don’t …understand cultural appropriation.”
Wallace said she hopes for a class similar to a learning community to be established.
“We don’t want this to be an essay class,” Wallace said. “We want it to be conversation-based, discussion-based.”
Rachel Baker, a sophomore studying social work, and Sasha Gough, a sophomore studying creative writing, gave the final presentation of the night, addressing rape culture on campus.
The two presenters named campus athletics as one of the biggest contributors, along with Greek life and law enforcement.
“In any sports culture, they’re going to put these athletes on a pedestal and make the general masses believe they can do no wrong,” Gough said.
Gough said she believes this discredits any sexual assault survivors who name an athlete as their attacker.
Moving forward, Student Union’s General Assembly meetings will take place once a month in the Schoonover Center for Communication, in addition to weekly meetings on Thursdays in Ellis Hall.
Tyler Barton, a 2012 OU alumnus and founding member of the Student Union, said the general assembly was important for more in-depth discussion.
“We felt like not everyone was on the same page about what the priorities are and why they matter,” Barton said.
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