Wednesday November 10, 2010 year: 130 No. 150 the student voice of
The Ohio State University
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thelantern Ohio Congressional Archives ‘close to capacity’
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Lauren haLLoW Senior Lantern reporter hallow.1@osu.edu As the largest university in the country, it makes sense Ohio State would have a lot of books. But it might have too many. The Lantern reported last week that the university depositories are running out of room, leading workers to recycle old books or throw them away. The Ohio Congressional Archives, a part of the Library Book Depository and University Archives Building on West Campus, is running out of room as well. “If you know someone with $8 million, let me
know,” said archivist Jeff Thomas, alluding to the cost of a new addition to the archives. Spread throughout roughly three aisles — 32-feettall by 170-feet-long — are the congressional papers from four former Ohio lawmakers: ex-Ambassador Milton Wolf, former Reps. Ralph Regula and Deborah Pryce, and former Sen. John Glenn. Thomas said although the Ohio Congressional Archives is looking for new material, it is close to full capacity. There is room for maybe “the next three or four years,” he said, before the collection runs out of space. The collection began when Glenn was getting ready to leave office in the late 1990s. When someone who worked in the National Archives at the Library of Congress recommended he donate his
Senate papers to OSU, Glenn contacted E. Gordon Gee, who was in his first run as president of OSU and was “all for it.” “We gave (OSU) a massive amount of stuff,” Glenn said in a telephone interview with The Lantern. “When I was growing up as a young teenager in the Great Depression, you just didn’t throw things away. It became a lifelong habit.” Glenn’s materials, which Thomas said are filed away in about 600 boxes, were donated in 1999 and became the John Glenn Collection. That was also the year the John Glenn Institute, now known as the John Glenn School of Public Affairs, was created. OSU eventually decided to expand the collection to create the Ohio Congressional Archives, soliciting
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6A Student spinner
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Penn State coach Joe Paterno comes to Columbus one week after earning his record 400th victory.
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Sarah FiSher Lantern reporter fisher.713@osu.edu
1B chelsea handler in columbus The host of the late-night talk show “Chelsea Lately” will perform Friday at Veterans Memorial.
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Sign-spinners from all over the globe will take their talent to Los Angeles from Feb. 14 to 20 for a signspinning competition, and an Ohio State student-spinner might join them. The spinners, often seen on street corners and outside businesses, get paid to attract as many eyes as possible to the human-sized, arrow-shaped banner advertisements they toss in the air. Their stunts are often accompanied by breakdance-style improvisation. Matt Gardner, a third-year in food and science technology, said he and his fellow sign-spinners constantly compete to come up with the best tricks. He works for the campus advertising branch of AArrow Ads, a San Diego-based company that trains spinners in “guerilla marketing,” according to the company’s website. If he is nominated as the best trickster in the campus group, he gets to compete in LA. Known as a “spinstructor,” Gardner has worked for the
Students: Union rooms tough to book juSTin conLeY Lantern reporter conley.325@osu.edu Less than seven months after the grand opening of the new Ohio Union, student organizations have complained that it can take months to reserve many of the building’s rooms. Officials disagree and say some students just don’t understand the reservation process. Many of the complaints are directed toward Union staff members who field reservation requests. “It takes them like eight days to fill a request,” said Eric Richards, a third-year in mechanical engineering and a leader of Engineers without Borders. “If we want to get an e-mail out three days before a meeting to make sure that people can plan ahead for it, we’ve got to request (a room) like two weeks in advance.” He said his organization often needs to schedule meetings on the fly, since it doesn’t always have time to in advance. Jenn Cartmille, president of the Public Relations Student Society of America at OSU, said she has waited even longer than Richards. “They don’t get back to you to confirm the room until three weeks prior to the event, which causes problems because we are counting on it,” she said. Cartmille said she requested a space in the Union in August for an event held Tuesday. She received the confirmation in mid-October. Officials dispute allegations of long waits for confirmation, but Union Director Tracy Stuck said the five full-time staff members who handle event requests have their hands full, with about 58 requests a day. “There’s a lot of events coming in and out of this space,” she said. “Typically they’ve told me the longest (confirmations have taken) is a week.” Stuck said most students can start booking rooms for meetings a quarter in advance, and big events are often booked a year or more in advance. If students request space online, they are essentially stepping into a digital line behind other
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Kappa Phi Kappa, an academic fraternity, meets inside the maudine cow room on the lower level of the ohio union on monday evening. requests, Stuck said. If their request is granted, students receive a confirmation letter within a week and are required to drop off or fax the confirmation, Stuck said. Students can also request rooms at the front desk of the Union, where they have the benefit of knowing if another student organization is trying to book the same room at the same time, she added.
Some complaints probably come from students who don’t understand the reservation process and that they have to return a signed copy of the confirmation letter, Stuck said. But other complaints might stem from the fact that students simply have less space on campus
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