BREAKING NEWS!  

Baker Center gets $4M from fees and it's operating at a loss!  Turn off the esculators and bring back the wooden staircase in the woods that were in place when I was a student!  What a complete waste of money, and it's causing our students to be fat and lazy.  

http://thepost.ohiou.edu/main.asp?SectionID=1&SubSectionID=1&ArticleID=33714

Don't even get me started on Ping.  I'm sure that place is hemorrhaging student fee money as well.  Where in the mission statement does it say we must provide students with treadmills and climbing walls.  We need to start selling off that equipment on Ebay, lets recoup whatever we can.

Removing tongue from cheek, in other news, Vedder and friends are thinking about asking for help on how to correctly run a poll:

http://thepost.ohiou.edu/main.asp?SectionID=2&SubSectionID=4&ArticleID=33712

Sigh..... 

I guess I'll just keep saying it.  If you don't like OU's tuition and fees structure, you've got thousands of other options available to you to obtain your degree.

Uh, that's what they are doing.  Just because you disagree with the views they are expressing about how to better tailor Ohio University to the educational needs of the students doesn't mean that that isn't the intent of their criticisms.

I don't think it's accurate to state that the entire increase in athletics expenditures is related to tuition, although it is certainly a significant factor (and quite possibly #1 overall).  For example, our football and basketball spending has been increased in recent years outside of just the cost of tuition, with respect to coaches salaries, recruiting budgets, etc.

As for why tuition is so high, there are a plethora of reasons for that.  Entire books have been written on the subject, with a variety of different reasons offered. 

I faxed my response letter to The Post on February 8.To date it hasn't been printed.

Maybe The Post had a legitimate reason for not printing it (I did spell check it,so that can't be it)  or maybe they'll print it at a later (irrelevant) date.But, from what I've read, and experienced,The Post doesn't
like to print letters that oppose postions their editors agree with.They also,by not printing opposing
points of view,are able to make it look like no one disagrees with certain people's comments.

I think Dr. Vedder should reach out to Dr. Emmett Brown, borrow the Delorean, and go back to March, 2010.  There seemed to be a mass of students on/in Court Street celebrating a certain win that would all love to participate in his fancy little poll.

The idea in rpbobcat's letter is what I see as the central misunderstanding here - the conflation of primary and ancillary university functions during discussions about hard budgetary choices.

When and if things really get down to "brass tacks," a healthy, common sense distinction between necessary and unnecessary categories of expenditures should guide the process. Instead, I see people trying to shoehorn intercollegiate athletics into the same sphere of prioritization as academics. There are many good things to say about why the current ICA arrangement is beneficial, and supporters should articulate these things given the situation, but acting as though athletics is on the same level as, say, the history department is an error that I believe will work against those who support ICA's current configuration.  

OU always will have history and modern language departments, business and journalism schools, a medical program, various science and engineering tracks and certain other established academic offerings. I hope it will always have FBS/Division I or equivalent sports teams, just like I hope it will continue to bring in internationally prominent speakers and performing artists and continue to offer Alden Library as a free community resource. But I must concede that those things on my wish list would and should not survive at the cost of an academic slide down below Miami, WVU or other peer institutions.

There are non-shrill, non-gumshoe professors such as Harold Molineu voicing concern about such a slide actually now occurring.

I don't know if it's happening, and I think it's ridiculous if Athens isn't a "desirable relocation possibility" to today's yuppie, but I saw a need for dynamic, fearless professors during my studies there and believe that might be a legitimate funding priority.



It's just a different animal, the company and the public college. The inmates run the asylum to some extent at the latter. Shared governance is not what you get at Coca-Cola, and I'm fine with that contrast. On the other hand, there's a certain ritual bitching that goes on with some union-affiliated professors that always falls on deaf ears by the president and board.

Personally, I sense less scrutiny and friction toward basketball than the football program during the Solich/TOS/Groce era among academic types I've known. Don't know Hays or Vedder.

I do think that the students should drive the process and vote with their feet and money. I'd be equally scrutinizing expenditures such as the one for Annie Sprinkle or whatever her name is, the lesbian enviro-religion art project thing and stuff like that.

One way to trim the fat:  The English Department is saving $10,000 in the upcoming budget year by yanking all phones out of faculty offices.  Only the chairman and other administrative offices in the department will retain phones.  Everyone else will have to rely on personal cell phones.