Tuesday April 10, 2012 year: 132 No. 49
the student voice of
The Ohio State University
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thelantern Meet the
sports
USG
candidates
THE
OHIO STATE UN I VERSI T Y part 2 of 2 part series
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Taking on the offense
With the loss of three offensive lineman, some OSU football players are stepping up with the spring game on the horizon.
[ a+e ]
Thomas Bradley / Campus editor
Taylor Stepp (left), a 2nd-year in Russian and public affairs, and Kevin Arndt (right), a 3rd-year in public affairs and political science, are running for president and vice president of USG.
Kyle Strickland and Nick Parker aim to increase community, provide comprehensive student center.
Taylor Stepp and Kevin Arndt plan to advocate for students with a focus on a ‘Buckeye state of mind.’
Kelsie Ozamiz Senior Lantern reporter ozamiz.4@osu.edu
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Cut from a local cloth
A new Short North store, Tha City Clothing Company, was founded by five friends and features local artists’ work.
campus
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Boarding on the edge
Despite some campus laws, The Longboarding Club gets its thrills and enjoyment from the dangers of their activities.
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Thomas Bradley / Campus editor
Kyle Strickland (left), a 3rd-year in political science, and Nick Parker (right), a 4th-year in political science and sociology, are running for president and vice president of USG.
One team running in the Undergraduate Student Government election has built a “Buckeye Blueprint” to keep student government relevant and ensure a sense of community. Presidential candidate Kyle Strickland, a third-year in political science, and running mate Nick Parker, a fourth-year in political science and sociology, said they want to bring USG back to the students. “For Kyle and I, the overwhelming theme of our campaign is building the Buckeye community,” Parker said. “We have seven years of combined USG experience, so we’ve been in the organization for a while. We know what USG is capable of, we know the reputation it has with students and we want to make that better.” Strickland and Parker’s campaign logo depicts their names on Lego blocks, which the team said played into its theme of building community on campus. Strickland said the most original part of their blueprint is the goal to establish a holistic student success center. “Our goal is to basically streamline the processes,” Strickland said. “So we’ll have internships, job opportunities and scholarships, have that all in the Ohio Union and give that to people to be readily available, because now it’s kind of all over the place.” Strickland said the concept wouldn’t eliminate any of the career and academic services on campus, but would instead pull from those resources and build upon them. Another essential part of their campaign has been their safety platform.
“I’ve had students tell me that the off-campus area doesn’t feel safe,” Parker said. “That bothers me as an off-campus senator. I want to help them and see if I can increase lighting, pedestrian safety and awareness of sexual violence.” Strickland and Parker have been working together in USG for three years, and Parker said it has made them a great team. ”I met Kyle the first week he ever stepped foot on the university,” Parker said. “He joined my committee in USG. He came up to me and said he wanted to help students. I was really drawn to him there. The following year we got paired up again. We’ve become pretty good personal friends, but I see in him a spirit to help the community and Buckeye Nation and really put his ideas into policies that USG can implement.” Strickland said their time at USG has allowed them to see members’ egos come and go, but stressed that USG has been on the right track lately and wants to keep that going. “We are in the right direction,” Strickland said. “But we want to take that leap forward, and we need you guys to hold us accountable.” Strickland and Parker repeatedly stressed the importance of students being active in the system and holding USG accountable for the promises they make. “Even if we win, we will not see a change in student government if students aren’t holding us accountable. We can’t let the election end after April 13.” The team is making several calls to action for students. Along with keeping USG in check, they said they
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Kristen Mitchell Senior Lantern reporter mitchell.935@osu.edu With Undergraduate Student Government campaigning in full swing, presidential candidate Taylor Stepp and vice presidential candidate Kevin Arndt have been busy reaching out to individuals and student groups with their platform, focusing on a “Buckeye state of mind.” “Our biggest platform point and what we want to put first on the agenda for what we want to push initially, is our five-step safety plan,” said Stepp, a second-year in Russian and public affairs. The five-step plan includes preparations to increase funding for student safety services and secure the program a permanent spot in the university fiscal budget, along with a push for a mutual-aid agreement between the Columbus Division of Police and Ohio State Police. The plan also includes the idea of a “Safe-Walk program” in collaboration with the community ambassadors, which would act as an alternative to the Student Safety Service student escort program. Instead of being picked up in a university vehicle, students would be able to be walked home by a trained student, an initiative the candidates hope will cut down on lengthy waits for current services. The final point in their safety plan is to provide students with more education on crime and living in a city environment. “We want to educate students in survey classes, letting them know this is an urban campus, a very different environment than what the average college freshmen’s typically from,” Stepp said. The candidates have also pledged to make safety information more
accessible online, with visual aids illustrating when problems have occurred in the off-campus area. Stepp said he would like students to have access to more data about where sexual predators are and where violent crimes have taken place so students can “better guard themselves.” The candidates would like to meet the issue of campus safety with an attitude that they said differs from how it is currently handled. “We need to stop making safety a PR issue. Instead of these grandeur announcements about task forces and not a lot of implementable ideas, we need to make it more about protecting students and not about protecting the universities PR,” said Arndt, a third-year in public affairs and political science. Aside from their focus on safety, the candidates plan to address student concerns about the semester conversion by holding the university accountable to the promises they made when committing to the term change. “The university made two pledges to students. One, that no time would be added to your date of graduation because of the conversion, and two, no more expenses will be added because of semesters conversion,” Stepp said. Under their leadership, any student who feels like the university is not holding true to its pledges will be able to submit a complaint electronically to the newly formed semester Conversion Appeals Board within the USG office, where at that point USG would attempt to get a hearing date for the student to make his or her case. Stepp and Arndt have labeled themselves as advocates for the Greek system, including a Greek
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Many faculty oppose parking privatization Sarah Stemen Oller reporter stemen.66@osu.edu A large majority of Ohio State faculty said they do not support the recent proposal to privatize OSU’s parking operations. During a weeklong survey window, 1,047 out of the 1,252 faculty who responded said they do not support privatization of OSU parking operations. Eighty-six participants responded that they do favor the issue and 119 said they don’t know enough about the privatization proposal to take a position. Out of the faculty members who decided to take a position on the issue, 92.4 percent were in opposition to the proposal and 7.6 percent were in favor of the issue. The university is considering a proposal that would include selling its parking to a third-party vendor for an up-front, one-time cost of at least $375 million. The university is determining guidelines to which the thirdparty vendor will have to abide by, such as setting a cap for how much the vendor might raise parking rates. The proposal has upset many faculty members and students because the vendor is permitted to raise parking prices by 7.5 percent annually for the first ten years of the contract or the price of inflation, whichever is higher. However, the university administration said selling the parking would reap benefits for the university due to its plan to put profits into an endowment that would acquire interest. Enrico Bonello, a member of Faculty Council and a professor of plant pathology, said he has seen a strong-arm of opposition to the proposal. “I have not seen or heard one person who has voiced their opinion in favor of privatization,” Bonello said. “We are almost all in agreement.” The survey was hosted on Zoomerang, an online host for surveys and polls. A total of 2,804 faculty members were invited to participate in the survey that was distributed via email and included assistant, associate and full professors.
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Brittany Schock / Asst. photo editor
A survey, which polled more than 1,200 faculty members, found that a majority of the professors that responded were opposed to the parking privatization plan.
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