The days of the Ohio University Board of Trustees’ spring meetings are usually a flurry for us, as we work to contextualize the university’s recently unveiled budget for the next academic year.
Although our newsroom was abuzz with other Board of Trustees happenings, the familiar feeling of fashioning a story about next year’s finances wasn’t a part of the excitement.
The board decided to postpone its presentation of the budget for the coming financial year until its next meeting, which is in June. That budget, by the way, includes next’s year’s tuition prices.
Pushing back the tuition vote to a time when students won’t be on campus to raise hell might not be the board’s direct intention, but it sure is a convenient maneuver that smells suspiciously like a sidestep.
Board secretary Peter Mather said in an email that the vote was delayed to give trustees more time to “consider the implications” of raising tuition. If that’s true, and they still vote to raise tuition after an extra three months of “considering” it, we’ll be even more suspicious.
We think it’s a cop-out to make a decision that so significantly affects students smack-dab in the middle of their summer, the one time when the board knows students won’t be in town to protest its meetings and probably won’t be keeping up with university news.
Of course, the meetings are streamed online. But in order for students to get their voices heard in front of the board this summer they would have to make a day trip to OU’s Eastern campus in St. Clairsville.
For students who want to get a glimpse of what’s going on in this season’s meeting, there’s still plenty on the agenda.
If you feel so inclined, the board and university administrators will be discussing measures such as the two-year closure of our beloved Jefferson Hall beginning in 2016 and the repurposing of its now-closed dining hall, adding five officers to the ranks of the university’s police department and closing Mulberry Street (by the graffiti wall). Each of these stories is detailed in today’s front-page story on the board’s agenda.
Still, students have the most at stake at Board of Trustees meetings, and we’re disappointed that they will be able to hear discussion about tuition in the meetings this week but won’t get wind of a decision until midway through the summer.
But don’t you fret, fellow truth seekers, we will be covering the June board meeting as thoroughly as this one despite the time of year.
If you’d like to hitch a ride with us over to St. Clairsville, please feel free to drop us a line.
Or we can at least watch the live stream together.
Editorials represent the majority opinion of The Post’s executive editors.
