I know the Alumni Association's web site used to have a "portal" where you get that type of information.
Don't know if its still there or not.

If you have an idea when the person was at O.U.,you could look at old yearbooks.
Its not foolproof,but its something.

There are alumni directories published from time to time (I have one from 2008) so information may be in one of these. The alumni house may be open on Saturday so a visit there might be helpful, too.

I love saying sentences like this to my wife just to make her head explode, even if it's not actually true.

"Yeah, I was with that guy for 48 straight hours on that trip. No, I still don't know his first name."

Problem with the yearbooks is that very few seniors got/get their pictures taken. The vast majority of colleges have eliminated the book altogether.

Degrees from Public Universities should be a matter of public record.

Ohio University should take the initiative on this topic and create a public blockchain of all graduates. The concept is really straight-forward: when you graduate, you get added to a public list of Bobcat alumni. The public list has 3 columns: Name, Graduation Year, Random Password

Example:
Name, Graduation Year, Random Password Encryption
Andrew Ruck, 2003, xy1m2i3a4m5i6s7u8c9k0z
The Optimist, 2012, f4343ji4h32gi3i54j3fiz
DJ Cooper Jr, 2030, 594juj4ig5ppw3589e341v

The first two columns explain themselves, the 3rd column "Random Password" is just random numbers and letters that a computer would encrypt. The computer would also encrypt one other set of random numbers and letters for each line which they would give only to the graduate which acts like a "Key." If the graduate ever wanted to prove to an employer they have a degree, they could give them their "Key" and a computer could use that to run a calculations that validates they are telling the truth.

It's a win-win because this would let anyone search names of graduates from Ohio and it could also save the University A TON of resources on employer validation. Call it the Bobcat Blockchain.

There's no good reason a simple tool like this shouldn't be available online. Maybe it is still around and it's hidden away on the website? Anyone know?

My experience is that a lot of big organizations and companies have removed many simple tools similar to this in recent years to prevent information from being shared online. The narrative I've seen play out goes something like this: someone gets hacked or is afraid of being hacked which results in a huge over-reaction about how cyber-security is handled. Rather than using logic and common sense to decide what type of information and tools should be accessible to the masses, there's a huge IT push to treat everything as "classified" and limit access to just a few people.

This is just a guess, but my suspicion is that Ohio University might fit into that mold. I recall when I was looking at colleges my Junior and Senior year of high school, I would see Ohio University on the national news because computer systems were breached and a whole bunch of social security were made public about either students, faculty or alumni. Maybe all? I don't know the details, but it's not difficult to imagine this having a big impact on what type of information is shared about alumni on websites now. In my opinion, there's a very big difference between something like publishing the names of a graduating class compared to more personal things like social security numbers or detailed information that can make people personally-identifiable, but there's probably a lot more to the story here than I'm aware of.