Meh - Students shouldn't be on the board at all and shouldn't vote.

Is there any industry that adds 20 year olds with no college degree and no in depth work experience to their boards? Honestly, I don't even understand the argument that a student needs to be a voting member of the board at all. Find me the smartest, most experienced and dedicated people you can for the board.

Not sure I understand the dissatisfaction with higher education in Ohio. With schools like Ohio, Kent State, Cincinnati, Miami, and OSU, Ohio is very well served right now.

There's plenty of people who can keep the trustees informed and up to date, including students themselves.  You don't need to be on the board to do that.  Also, this idea that trustees are clueless is strange to me.  These people take their positions very seriously.  And, give up a lot of their time serving the university.  And, its a thankless job.  I bet Bob Walter never knew how dumb he was until he was appointed to the Board at Ohio University. 

The great people of the state of Ohio have decided (rather democratically I might add) that the Governor appoints Board Members and Board Members hire presidents and presidents and Board Members hire executives and those folks run universities.  Like I said previously, this is still working rather well at many universities in Ohio.

Not implementing your or my specific ideas doesn't meant they are dumb and out of touch.  I don't agree with everything the university does.  But, this place and several others in Ohio seem to be doing quite well.

Will the cost involved eventually destroy the traditional college industry?  Maybe.  Maybe not.  Right now consumers are still lining up.  And requesting a country-club type experience that drives costs up as well.  I hope it survives in its current state.  Kids sitting in their parents basements getting lectured to by a talking head on a computer doesn't seem like a winning formula to me.  But, that's just my crazy opinion.

Isn't this largely due to the state lowering its subsidization of higher education?  A seat on the Board won't change that.

If that were true we wouldn't have folks like that trustee several years ago who explained away the tuition increase by saying that students might just have to forgo an expensive pair of jeans or two.  We wouldn't have trustees like the trustee who oversaw the Columbus school system for years and now claims she didn't know a thing about the data scrubbing.  Many, not all, trustee appointments are for political and financial loyalty as opposed to true merit and service.

Well it's started.  According to an article in today's messenger, the president of senate asked for three minutes of time during Sunday's freshman convocation to welcome the class of 2018 to OU.  Request denied.  For some reason, I can't get a link to the article to post but it's there if you can access it.  Seems that this used to be a regular part of the convocation but over the last 5 to 7 years it's disappeared or been replaced by a contest to chose the speaker.  One would think that the elected head of the student governement would automatically be scheduled as a part of this annual welcome.

I would respectfully disagree.  This isn't really about the 3 minutes of requested speech time, it's about the legitimacy of a duly elected student to the most important elected student position at a college or university.  It's also about another opinion as opposed to a rubber stamp.  If you remember, just a couple years ago the administration cited the opionion of a student leader in this exact same position as justification for using student fees for the multipurpose facility.  If that opinion carries so much wait when it suits the powers that be perhaps it should care as much wait in matters that don't.

All I can think about when I read this stuff is how incredibly naive I was in college while speaking with great conviction on subjects I knew next to nothing about.  And how I hope no tapes of these activities exist today.

I'm very glad someone recognized my right to be heard but I sure hope they weren't listening.

Regarding 'how many people vote' I think a fair amount do vote now because it is literally as easy as "go to this website, put in your student ID, pick the dropdown boxes and hit submit"

I keep coming back to this and still fail to see the logic in your argument.  The convocation was for incoming students - the student senate president is the elected representative of those students - in the past the president has spoken at this convocation - the current president asked to speak and was denied.  Doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

As for the AD speaking at graduation, there is no logical connection there at all.  Regardless, it's fun to watch an activist group of students even if they are young and naive.  Sometimes the locks on city hall need to be rattled a bit.

http://www.athensnews.com/ohio/article-43089-student-senate-leaders-plan-to-steer-new-course-this-year.html

And here's the ammunition they needed:

http://www.dispatch.com/content/stories/local/2014/08/29/...

It will be interesting to see if your tune changes when you start to pay tuition for the three kids in your avatar.