thelantern
Wednesday January 29, 2014
the student voice of The Ohio State University
year: 134 No. 14
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Athletic director Gene Smith named OSU VP, given 12% raise
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Miss America: true American
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OSU reacts to SOTU address
LIZ YOUNG Campus editor young.1693@osu.edu Ohio State athletic director Gene Smith has a new title and an updated contract. Smith was named an OSU vice president and given a nearly 12 percent pay increase and four year contract extension, pending OSU Board of Trustees approval later this week, OSU Interim President Joseph Alutto announced Tuesday. Smith’s contract is now set to expire June 30, 2020, and he will continue to report directly to the university president, according to an OSU press release. His annual base salary is $940,484, effective July 1, 2013, though he will be eligible for “standard, university-wide merit based salary increases each year,” according to the release. Smith was paid about $840,484 in 2013, according to the Columbus Business First DataCenter. The Lantern requested an interview with Alutto following the announcement, however, OSU spokesman Gary Lewis said Smith’s new role “will be voted on Friday (at the OSU Board of Trustees meeting) during the public session as with other personnel actions,” in an email. Smith is set to have joint oversight responsibility with the Office of Business and Finance for OSU’s Business Advancement Division, which includes the Schottenstein Center, the Blackwell, Drake Performance and Event Center, the Fawcett Center and the Office of Trademark and Licensing Services. Smith is also slated to have responsibility for the Nationwide Arena Management agreement to “increase existing revenue streams and pursue new revenue opportunities through creative collaboration and innovation,” and partner with Business and Finance for responsibility of the university’s affinity agreements, according to the release. He said he is “grateful for the opportunity to lead the athletics program” at OSU in a released statement. “Working with the coaches, athletics staff, faculty and staff across the university enables us to provide positive experiences for the young people we serve, while finding ways to help them become global citizens impacting the world,” Smith said. “Ohio State is an amazing institution and I am proud to be a Buckeye.” Alutto said the contract extension, pay increase and additional title are a reflection of what Smith has done during his time at OSU, which began in 2005. “Gene Smith is one of this country’s most accomplished collegiate athletics directors, with an exemplary record of national leadership and service,” Alutto said in a released statement. “Thanks to his dedication
CODY COUSINO / For The Lantern
President Barack Obama at a campaign rally May 5, 2012, at the Schottenstein Center.
Lantern file photo
OSU athletic director Gene Smith during an October 2012 interview with The Lantern. to student success, graduation success rate of Ohio State’s student-athletes have risen … to 89 percent.” All OSU student-athletes had an NCAA graduation success rate of 89 percent in the most recent 2013 report, up from 61 percent in 2005-06, according to the release. Of all NCAA Division I student-athletes who entered college in 2006, 82 percent earned their degrees, according to an NCAA release. Smith is OSU’s eighth athletics director. He oversees 36 varsity sports, which more than 1,000 studentathletes participate in each year, according to the OSU release. Smith oversaw OSU’s Department of Athletics during Tattoo-gate, a 2010 improper benefits scandal which led to five football players’ five-game suspensions and a sixth player’s one-game ban for selling memorabilia and receiving improper benefits from the owner of a tattoo parlor. Former OSU coach Jim Tressel resigned in May 2011 in the wake of the scandal becoming public. Later, the NCAA banned OSU from postseason play in 2011 and sanctioned the program with a nine-year scholarship reduction over three years. Also during Smith’s tenure, Buckeyes have earned a variety of accomplishments, including winning 10 team national championships, 60 individual national championships, eight national players of the year and producing 22 Olympians. Smith has raised more than $400 million in partnership with the development staff during his time at OSU, according to the release.
NICK ROLL Lantern reporter roll.66@osu.edu While several Ohio State student leaders said they thought raising the federal minimum wage was a key point for students in the State of the Union address, their opinions conflicted over how realistic the proposal was. Opportunity was the overall theme of President Barack Obama’s State of the Union address Tuesday night. The president focused on some positives that have come from the last few years – the lowest unemployment in five years, the manufacturing sector adding jobs for the first time since the 1990s, producing more oil in America than the amount being bought from foreign countries – and said because those things have come from “grit and determined effort,” hard work is essential for more improvement in the country. The president mentioned goals including creating opportunity for middle class security, for the economy and for education. OSU Undergraduate Student Government Vice President Josh Ahart said of all of the things Obama spoke about, education was the most important. “The president called for a lot of things, and as far as OSU goes, affordable education and student loan reform are the most important things he called for,” said Ahart, a fourth-year in public affairs. Citing the economic impact it would have on families, the president urged Congress to raise the federal minimum wage to $10.10 per hour from $7.25, and promised to issue an executive order for federally funded wages to be set at that minimum.
“This will help families. It will give businesses customers with more money to spend. It doesn’t involve any new bureaucratic program,” Obama said. “Give America a raise.” Ahart said, though, he doesn’t think that raise will happen. “Minimum wage reform was probably the most unrealistic goal to come out of the State of the Union. Minimum wage affects people across the country, and students especially. I think we need to pass reform, but I don’t think it will happen,” Ahart said. College Democrats President Vince Hayden, a third-year in political science, disagreed with Ahart. “The executive orders, such as the one on raising the federal minimum wage, are the most realistic things to come into effect,” Hayden said. Hayden added, though, he doesn’t think much will come out of the speech as a whole. “I don’t think the State of the Union will ultimately have a lot of impact, despite our hopes. It was a partisan speech, and I think there are too many hardline Republicans for Congress to work together,” he said. College Republicans President Samuel Zuidema, a third-year in American history and American politics, said he, like Hayden, thinks minimum wage was the most realistic goal Obama mentioned. “The executive order regarding minimum wage is the most likely thing to come from the State of the Union,” Zuidema said. But even then, he added, it probably won’t happen. “Minimum wage doesn’t have a chance going through Congress,” Zuidema said. “Businesses just
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Thompson deemed ‘safe’ despite reported incidents Residence hall to provide sober space LOGAN HICKMAN AND REGINA FOX Senior Lantern reporter and Lantern reporter hickman.201@osu.edu and fox.1001@osu.edu
ALEX DRUMMER Lantern reporter drummer.18@osu.edu “My freshman and sophomore years of high school, I partied a lot. It was all I cared about.” “It was whatever, and then I got really suicidal and tried to kill myself because my drinking was out of control.” “I kept on going to the hospital because I kept on overdosing and mixing drugs with alcohol.” “I couldn’t handle myself and I started going to (Alcoholics Anonymous) when I was 16.” These are parts of the story of Haley Schuster, a third-year in special education and a member of the Collegiate Recovery Community at Ohio State — an organization that is set to secure an on-campus living option starting Fall Semester 2014 for students in recovery from drug or alcohol addictions. The residence hall, which is currently called Pennsylvania Place and located on South Campus at 1478 Pennsylvania Ave., is set to hold 28 beds. Students living in the Recovery House at Penn Place would live in two-person dorm rooms with private baths. The CRC students are slated to live clustered in a wing or on a floor, and the remaining rooms at Pennsylvania Place are to be filled with students who choose to live there based on its standing as a sober environment, said Sarah Nerad, graduate administrative associate for the CRC and Recovery House. “No additional funds (from the administration) are being put into the Recovery House,” Student Life spokesman Dave Isaacs said. “It will cost the same as any other on-campus residence hall (for students).” Students interested in joining the CRC and living in the Recovery House at Penn Place next year are required to fill out an application. “The application asks some basic demographic questions, a treatment history, drug and alcohol use history, eating disorder history (and so on),” Nerad said. “This will allow us to make sure that we appropriately refer student to services. If a student is like, ‘Hey, actually I’ve also been in treatment for an eating disorder,’ I’m able to be like, ‘OK, then that is something that we need to make sure we support you in.’” Nerad added that applicants are required to submit two letters of recommendation from a treatment provider or sponsor, but their application isn’t just for housing. “The application for the CRC and Recovery House is also a scholarship application, and it allows students to have priority registration,” Nerad said. One scholarship of $2,000 will be awarded to a CRC student. The funds for this scholarship came from an anonymous donor, Nerad said. Nerad said she hopes eight CRC students will live in the recovery house, because “eight is a good number.” Visit thelantern.com for the rest of this story.
Wednesday January 29, 2014
Despite recent reports of sexual imposition and indecent exposure at William Oxley Thompson Memorial Library, a student involved in one incident said she’s going to continue visiting the library, and officials said the building remains a safe place on campus. A recent University Police report stated a 56-year-old homeless man, described as “an habitual offender,” had been arrested for inappropriately touching female OSU students in Thompson Library Jan. 11. Later, two female students reported a man for exposing himself and masturbating while watching them in the library during an unrelated incident Jan. 13. Thompson Library, which is open to the general public with about 12,000 to 13,000 daily visitors, was designed with security in mind, Thompson Library security manager Brent Lewis said. “It’s extremely open — from the glass, from having the open atriums, essentially five stories tall — there’s a lot of openness,” Lewis said. “Overall, it’s a very safe place to come study.” Despite the library’s safety-minded architecture, the man who had been allegedly masturbating was able to make his way around library security to escape without questioning. One of the women involved in the incident, who is a first-year in nursing and who asked to remain anonymous because she doesn’t want the man to know her identity, was studying on the fourth floor of Thompson Library with a friend at about 2:45 p.m. when she noticed an elderly man gesturing to her from behind the glass wall. “I happened to look up and there was this older man waving at me — like an attentiongetting wave. He started lifting his shirt, then he started touching himself over top his jeans,” she said. She then began panning the room for her friend, whom she couldn’t find, she said. “When I looked back, he fully had his penis out and was masturbating in the stacks. So I was really shocked. That’s not something you expect to see in your school’s library,” the woman said.
Resources Ohio State libraries use for student safety:
Library security personnel
Partnership with University Police
Source: reporting And she said she wasn’t the only person to notice the man. “I happened to look over at a table behind me and I saw a girl who had her jaw dropped and I knew she had to have seen it, too,” she said. After making eye contact with the other witness, the first woman immediately headed for her table, she said. “When I got up, he took off sprinting and that’s the last I saw of him,” she said. By the time the two women made it down to the first floor to notify library security, the man was gone, she said. “I feel like he had a good idea of the setup of library because where he was, on the fourth floor, there’s a support beam that covers a certain portion of the glass wall so you couldn’t see him unless you were at the angle I was at,” she said. The man was described as being about 60 years old with a “scruffy beard” but “clean cut,” according to the University Police report. “He looked like your average grandpa, so aside from what he was doing, he looked normal,” the woman said. The two witnesses were told to alert the police if they see the man again. The woman said she has since returned to Thompson Library. “I figure he won’t be showing his face for at least a little bit, I’m hoping,” she said. Lewis, who oversees the library security staff for 13 Ohio State libraries, including at
Security cameras
MADISON CURTIS / Design editor
Thompson Library and the 18th Avenue Library, said students should always report suspicious behavior to library security personnel, if not to the police. “We have people (library security personnel) who are always roaming through out the facility – they (students) can call us, they can flag us down. They can also call the police themselves,” Lewis said. Besides one security officer at the 18th Avenue Library who is also an employee of the Department of Public Safety, the security officers at the libraries on campus report to Lewis and are separate from University Police officers. In addition to security personnel, Lewis said Thompson Library has a multi-prong approach to maximizing students’ safety. “We utilize cameras, we utilize access control, we utilize a policies and procedures code of conduct. We also utilize partnerships we have on campus with the Department of Public Safety and the (University) Police department,” Lewis said. When asked about changes to library security since the two reported incidences, Lewis said he was unable to comment because of the confidentially of security measures. Erin Walker, a first-year in pre-health sciences, said she doesn’t have any security hesitations when visiting Thompson Library and generally thinks of it as a safe place.
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