Tuesday October 11, 2011 year: 132 No. 16 the student voice of
The Ohio State University
www.thelantern.com
thelantern Pending parking change full of potholes
sports
Sarah Stemen Oller reporter stemen.66@osu.edu
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Discouraged defense
After leading 20-6 in the first half of Saturday’s game, OSU’s defense took an unexpected hit by Nebraska.
arts&life
After the Ohio State Board of Trustees approved a plan to sell university parking to a private vendor for up to $375 million, some students and faculty members are looking to other major cities like Indianapolis and Chicago to speculate possible outcomes. University officials are not revealing exactly how the $375 million figure was calculated. A public records request for the formula was denied due to trade secrets, officials said. President E. Gordon Gee told The Lantern the figure is simply just a number for a request for proposal but that he expects the deal to bring in more money for OSU. “If we can’t do much better than that, then we won’t do it,” Gee said. OSU has not yet selected a vendor for the parking proposal. Qualified vendors now have until Nov. 2 to respond to a request for qualification, OSU announced in its Request for Concessionaire Qualifications. But some students think the $375 million deal is not the university’s best option. “The $375 million looks good right now, yes, but I just think in the long run it won’t benefit the university as a whole and our price tag,” said Michael
OSU paid Posey’s lawyer nearly $142K
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Nathanson’s ‘Noise’
Matt Nathanson is scheduled to perform at Newport Music Hall Tuesday at 6 p.m.
campus
New majors, minors, programs come to ASC
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Gundich, first-year in industrial and visual design. In a similar move, the city of Indianapolis sold its parking meters to a private vendor, Affiliated Computer Services, in an effort to remodel the parking meter system in 2010. Kurt Fullbeck, project manager for the city of Indianapolis, said the reason for the switch was a technological one. “There was buzz for a push for more technologyfriendly meters. So ones that you can pay at with a credit card and there are multi-space meters available,” Fullbeck said. Fullbeck said the city’s parking transformation is a little different from what might be in the cards for OSU. “I’m not too familiar with OSU’s proposal, but it sounds like maybe they are considering selling their parking for just an up-front cost. Indianapolis’ parking is wired so that we did get a partial lump sum when we sold it. But, we still get a portion of all of the profit,” he said. ACS gave the city $20 million upfront and 20 percent of all profit to a point of sales, and then 25 percent thereafter, Fullbeck said. “We made the hybrid deal with ACS so that we would find a way to make some revenue, and still keep our citizens happy,” he said. Fullbeck said the city has received a lot of positive feedback. However, the city of Chicago did not choose to follow such a plan. In 2009, Mayor Richard Daley agreed to a 75-year meter lease for a one-time payment of $1.1 billion. The deal proved to be
Brittany Schock / Asst. photo editor
A car pulls out of Ives Drive parking garage on Sunday, Sept. 19, 2011. controversial because of extremely quick rate increases and the $9.5 billion the private companies who leased the meters profited. Chicago-Sun Times columnist Carol Marin wrote about Chicago citizens’ boycott of meters. “When the City of Chicago privatized parking meters, rates were immediately jacked way up, and you now have to feed 28 quarters into the meters to
Gut shot Safety Daimion Stafford (3) tackles quarterback Braxton Miller (5) in the 1st quarter of an NCAA football game between the Ohio State Buckeyes and the Nebraska Cornhuskers held at Memorial Stadium in Lincoln, Neb. on Saturday, Oct. 8, 2011. OSU lost 34-27.
Alex Antonetz Arts editor antonetz.3@osu.edu Ohio State has paid a Columbus law firm nearly $142,000 to represent players employed by former booster Robert DiGeronimo during the NCAA’s investigation of their eligibility. Crabbe, Brown and James LLP has been paid $141,814.30 for this case alone as of mid-September, said Shelly Hoffman, assistant vice president for OSU Media Relations. Larry James, the attorney representing DeVier Posey, who was handed a five-game suspension by the NCAA for his involvement in the scandal, said he expected backlash from the release of the figure, but confirmed to The Lantern that the figure was correct. James also represented the players involved in “Tattoo-gate,” including former quarterback Terrelle Pryor, and the group of football players James referred to as the “Sports Illustrated 9.” The “Sports Illustrated 9” refers to nine current players, separate from the six players suspended for “Tattoo-gate,” “whose alleged wrongdoing might fall within the NCAA’s four-year statute of limitations,” according to a June 6 Sports Illustrated article. Hoffman did not immediately return requests asking for how much the firm was paid for representing athletes in those cases. OSU’s athletics department paid the fees out of its general operations fund, which student fees do not go toward, said Dan Wallenberg, associate athletics director for communications. He also said the funds for similar services could come out of the Student-Athlete Opportunity Fund, which was created by the NCAA in 2003 to provide direct benefits to student-athletes or their families, and is generated by NCAA basketball tournament
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THOMAS BRADLEY / Campus editor
Protesters occupy Statehouse
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Michael Flannagan For the Lantern flannagan.6@osu.edu
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‘Occupy Columbus’ joins other protests around the nation including this one in New York City.
A movement that began with an “occupation” of New York City has found its way to Columbus in a rally Monday outside the Statehouse. Calling themselves “Occupy Columbus” supporters of the somewhat underground movement gathered beginning at 8 a.m. Monday outside the Statehouse and continued well into the evening. This gathering seemed to share the same sentiment of the economicmovement in New York that is receiving mainstream media attention. “We are the 99 percent and we demand to be heard,” read several signs at the protest. The 99 percent that is being referred to both in Columbus and in New York is the 99 percent of America that is not part of the richest 1 percent of the nation. Protesters said they want change and not just political jargon meant to score an electoral win. The change they seek is
transformative even if it is hard to define. At the heart of the movement, it is about economics. Multiple protesters spoke about economics and the capitalist system. Arthur Brehm, a fifth-year in history, described capitalism as “broken.” Brehm said his mother was a seamstress and his father is a welder. Brehm said he attended to “dramatize a shameful condition” in the decline of the middle class over the last few decades. Brehm called the movement a “populist rage.” Dan Horton, a student at Ohio University, disagreed with Brehm. “Capitalism is not the problem, lack of understanding what is capitalism is the problem,” Horton said. Conflicting statements were the norm at this rally because this movement does not seem to have one clear goal. It, like the movement in New York, seems to be defined by finances for one person and for others, it is defined by political and governmental change.
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