Student Senate to poll students on issues they care about
Nearly a month after Student Senate gave the green light for a campus-wide poll to gauge student opinion, a plan for the creation and distribution of the poll is in the works.
Students registered on Ohio University’s Athens campus can expect to receive the poll via email within the next few weeks before the end of the first semester. The email will come from the senate account, senate@ohio.edu.
In an effort to measure student interest and concern, questions will center on the list of demands senate passed during their Oct. 8 meeting, including a $15 minimum wage and a cap on administrative pay.
Stephen Golding, OU’s vice president for Finance and Administration, has previously expressed his concerns to The Post that an increase in student wages will have a substantial impact on OU’s budget.
“We have three choices as to how to cover these new costs — we can cut programs, reduce the number of available opportunities or increase these charges,” Golding said.
Senate plans to use the information collected from the poll to answer important questions that will allow them to choose which demand campaigns will make the best use of their resources.
“(We want to know) what does our base support look like for these different issues? What percentage of students can we count on mobilizing on certain issues?” said Caitlyn McDaniel, senate’s vice president. “We could go a lot of different ways with this, and it would help us if we knew for sure that if we commit time, funds and person power to this one issue, that it’s an issue students feel really strongly about.”
“We (will) know it’s is in their best interest because they’ve communicated back to us.”
Another goal of this campus-wide poll is to help senate members connect to their constituents. The poll will feature opportunity for students to suggest any new concerns that may not have been given senate attention to date.
“I feel very deeply that these sort of initiatives will start moving us toward a direct democracy participatory model that we’ve been trying to push for since we were elected,” McDaniel said.
As for an incentive to completing the polls, senate hopes that better representation in student government will be its own reward.
“Generally the biggest complaint with any sort of representative democracy is that they (the people) aren’t being properly represented, or that they don’t feel anyone is listening to them,” McDaniel said. “It will be really important that people respond to it, or else we won’t know.”
Governmental Affairs Commissioner Will Klatt refused comment for this Post article, but is writing poll questions that will be reviewed by Graduate Student Senate and organizations that are directly mentioned in the poll before it is sent to students.
“I really hope everyone chooses to participate,” McDaniel urged.
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