Meeting Minutes
Tuesday, November 26, 2002
4:00-6:00pm
33 W. 11th Avenue, Room 101
The meeting was called to order at 4:05pm by Chair Cormier.
Members in Attendance: Kelli Barker, John Berry, J. Briggs Cormier, Theresa Early, Ann Farrelly, Bill Hall, Kerry Hodak, Rich Hollingsworth, Janet Laster, Lauren Loughrey, Libby Marschall, H.G. Parsa, Rick Prescott, Rebecca Price, Melissa Rocco, Maurice Shipley, Tracy Stuck, Karen Weise.
Members Absent: Raul Herrera, Tammy Maltzan, Todd Armen, Harmon Vredeveld.
Guests in Attendance: Ruth Gerstner, Eric Busch, Katrina Leibst, Sarah Topy, Eddie Pauline, Don Stenta, Louise Douce.
Discussion of Off Campus Riots
Dr. Holbrook said that she was happy to be with the council today and feels like this is a great opportunity to bring collective wisdom to the current situation. Everyone is concerned and embarrassed for such a great university. Speaking specifically about the riots, everyone woke up devastated on Sunday morning. There was a lot of time spent on Sunday and Monday talking about the situations and thinking about where to go from there. The focus is on moving forward, the situation is and has been bad, but this is a great university. Yes, there is a black mark on our image, but we will move on, we are national leaders. I really think is this the end of these disturbances and we are getting lots of great ideas from all over the nation to ensure that this is the end. At Michigan, the university collaborates with property owners and there are fines for littering due a special city ordinance. We are looking at strategies such as this where we turn the situations back on those responsible. I have received hundreds on emails and 100% of them say that this has to end, and they are from students, faculty, and alumni. There has been a great response from everyone. We have to start thinking about how to turn this around and this is a great opportunity to do so today.
Vice President, Bill Hall – Hall gave an update on action taken thus far. We are in the process of reviewing all of the arrest records. One Ohio State officer has been places in the operation center of Columbus city police to assist with the process. The judicial process has been initiated for the students who were involved. Ten letters of interim suspension were delivered to the students by uniformed police officers in their classes to town out of the sixteen students identified. The other six students that were arrested were not in the area of the riots or were arrested earlier that day. Students were cited for a variety of things such as public indecency, underage drinking, and disorderly conduct. The students who were cited and who live in the residence halls have 5 hours to vacate and have an opportunity to appeal within 3 days. It is speculated that any charges will lead to expulsion or ineligibility to enroll at any state institution. Many other students were arrested from other universities and we are currently in the process of contacting the Vice Presidents and Deans at those institutions asking for their cooperation with these students. The website is up and linked off the Ohio State main page asking the public to identify people involved in the riots. I have received many calls and hundreds of emails and the overwhelming sense is that we can no longer tolerate this behavior. We need to find a strategy to end this behavior because we are overshadowing the great victory by our team.
Questions and Discussion
Shipley: Wondering about fines and what will happen to alumni who were involved.
Hall: Five alumni have been identified thus far. We will be approaching athletics council and proposing that their ticket privileges are revoked.
Shipley: Is it possible to revoke other privileges?
Hall: We have not decided yet, but we need to brainstorm what to recommend to the university. Another thing I want to mention is that Eddie, Todd, and Briggs, the presidents of the student governments are sending a letter to students. I agree with this idea and think that they should be sending a voice to the students, how they decide to send it, together, or separate, is up to them, but this message from their peers is important.
Price: Is it possible to make the punishments of these students public?
Hollingsworth: As it stands, the university disciplinary process cannot be released. The court cases of the students can be since those are public record. Certainly at the end of all of the judicial hearings, we can release total numbers of students who were arrested or suspended.
Hall: We released very little public information in the past and that led to a perception that the university did nothing, but that is not the case.
Laster: There was a list of students involved in the paper this morning, but it just said student and did not list the institution, were they just Ohio State students?
Hall: They were from various institutions.
Barker: Is it possible to make the disciplinary actions of past events public? That would serve as a deterrent against future events such as over New Years or in April.
Hall: We are trying to send that message to students. Part of the reason for the press conference yesterday was to send that message and we sent uniformed officers to the classes today to send that message to the students involved and the other students in the classes.
Pauline: We held a meeting with residence hall students last night and we found that the mentality surrounding these events is like a drug. It is like the urge to drink or experiment with drugs. We are really concerned with why people are attracted to this form of entertainment. The audience is really an issue; people are coming to take pictures and are becoming addicted.
Hall: We saw this last year as well. People are taking knee knockers as souvenirs. The purpose of the people is not to riot, it is for the adrenaline rush and this is a problem.
Weise: Is there any component of service to the punishment for the students?
Hall: USG organized a clean-up the morning after the game, which is a great strategy, but I am personally tired of going out, seeing beer and empty cans thrown because someone else will pick it up.
Price: Can we go to a policy where you cannot have a party on your lawn?
Hall: That goes back to the enforcement of the student code of conduct. Extending the scope of the code to off-campus areas was questioned before, but we cannot adequately address these issues until we can use the code off campus.
Price: Can we add "riot" to the code?
Hall: That is not out of possibility.
Hollingsworth: It is time to review the code and these issues are some of the most important reasons why.
Cormier: We will take this issue up next year.
Liebst: Revoking someone’s tickets is very powerful, can we do that for those involved?
Hall: That is what we want to do, especially for alumni.
Shipley: I understand the need for caution, but most people think that we are not taking care of business.
Hall: We are moving as quickly as possible, but we must preserve the rights of due process. I am under the pressure to act, but we must ensure fairness.
Topy: I understand why we need to look at punitive and preventative measures, but I don’t think we are focusing on the heart of the issue enough. We need to find the root of the problem and have dialogue with students to find that and work to truly address it.
Hall: I don’t disagree with this at all. We’ve tried a lot of things: campus beautification, party smart, Buckeye Watch, but we obviously have not found the heart of the issue yet.
Douce: I would like to suggest two possible answers to these questions. First, there is an adrenaline rush for students. This is not new, the same thing happened in the 1960’s between Ohio State and Michigan. The game happens at a point in the quarter when students are very stressed. Also, I believe there is a real privilege issue here; students feel it is their right to do this. There is no easy answer here, this will be a long haul. Reality TV is sending a message to students that you can do something crazy.
Hall: I couldn’t agree more, we heard that from students all night that this was their right.
Weise: Students felt bitter and threatened by the announcements before the game. Maybe if the statements came from the players, or Tressel, it would have made a better impression on the students.
Holbrook: The message came from Archie. I only made three comments and that was for students to think, use moderation, and be respectful. I think there is a problem with people questioning authority. It is unfair to place that burden on the team members, we want to protect them as much as possible.
Hall: Before the president made any comments, we discussed it with all of the Vice Presidents and the consensus was that something needs to be done about the game culture.
Hollingsworth: We have not heard from the police if the deliveries in the classes worked. I think we need a complicated and sophisticated analysis looking at both who is participating and who is in the crowd watching.
Hodak: Athletics Council discussed how to have a better crowd, but it was pointed out that students who are perpetrating the rules are not going to listen to anyone. There is a total disregard for authority.
Price: I firmly believe that you have to earn your privileges, and no one has earned the right to party on their porch. Yes, this would be super tough, but that is what we need. I am sick of being embarrassed and I think we should take away as many rights as we can.
Farrelly: From the beginning, there was talk about rioting regardless of the outcome, I think we need to address that.
Prescott: I also think we need to figure out who was arrested and what class rank they have. I remember coming here as a freshman and that was the only thing I was thinking about: partying. I also think a problem is the amount of beer available. I think there should be a limit on the amount of kegs per party because then people wouldn’t be able to get intoxicated enough to do this much damage. No junior or senior I know went because they are sick of it. Police should also be there the whole time , maybe even undercover, and as soon as someone rocks a car or takes a couch to the street, the cuffs should go on right away.
Shipley: I appreciate your concern, but you simply cannot hire enough police to do this. I cam down on Saturday morning and drive down 15th Avenue and there was kegs and eggs at 5:30am. That is a problem. After the game, I went down the street with a police officer and people tried to hit my car. The game was just over and there were not enough police there to handle the issue. I was very angry. I have two brothers who are police officers and I don’t think there should be any kegs. We simply do not have enough police to deal with this.
Cormier: We hear administrators and student leaders response, but what is the faculty role and response?
Shipley: If you can involve faculty members at all, I think you should. I don’t think there is one faculty member who would not say something.
Douce: Some did have discussions in their classes, but I do not think that they were prepared for their "it is my right" attitude and response. I think many faculty are in shock at what students say and we have to help them facilitate that dialogue.
Cormier: How do we do that?
Laster: I would facilitate the conversation so that other students’ voices are the authority. I mostly deal with graduate students and junior and seniors. They can even have a hard tie advocating different points of view. I agree that anyone who speaks in a PSA needs to be closer to their age. I also think we need to understand group behavior and how to best deal with it.
Hodak: I think there is no sense of OSU community because faculty and staff are not involved in the university district. Faculty are not serving in a mentoring role. Graduate students are playing a significant role because they are teaching most of the GEC’s and therefore have a large influence with students.
Loughrey: It is the freshman and sophomores that we need to target and unfortunately they are in the large classes and cannot have those discussions. Graduate students do have access and can create the environment to have those discussions versus authority figures.
Berry: I lived through a similar thing at Illinois and everything that has been mentioned was implemented at one time. The original voice of "this is okay" was then replaced by a larger voice of "not acceptable" and was heard by the college community.
Liebst: The class dialogue would be interesting, I heard nothing in my classes, yet I knew the administration was working so hard. Perhaps then the "not a good idea" voice would be heard. The only problem is that some faculty and graduate students have a sense of tradition and think this is okay.
Pauline: I think we need to go after those who think they had the right to do this. We need to get people who "didn't do it" but who were there. There are thousands of innocent people who were there who are guilty and we need to find out why. I don’t want to talk about this in class because it is not related to what I am learning.
Cormier: I think we should not use the word innocent if you were present. We need to look at language.
Price: I have been to dialogues, and those at dialogues are the ones who would not riot. What worked my freshman year was no parties. The Lantern made me petrified and they will find something else besides parties.
Farrelly: I did find dialogue important in my classes. I asked the students to talk to me about what to do, and I also pointed out to them that those present were part of the problem. As far as stricter rules go, I know that at University of Dayton implemented these types of rules with their problems. They took away St. Patrick's day and Spring Break falls over it, they took away Homecoming, the keg fines are extremely expensive, parties all have a police officer at the keg checking the IDs. Those were things that were very unpopular but it worked.
Topy: I disagree, taking things away does not solve the problem; we need to have dialogue continuously.
Hollingsworth: We saw something different this time, there were really only 2 large parties. This was not about parties, there weren't even any parties on 13th Avenue. One of the sad things about the culture is that I cannot remember the last time that we have taken an issue and made it a community issue. We do not treat issues as community issues.
Barker: My TA in my biology class made statements to us. We need to look at the demographics of who is doing it. I think we need to go into “riot mode” and shut down the dorms. At Ohio University’s Halloween, all guests must be registered and students are limited to one guest. Michigan weekend here is like Halloween at OU, the current system does not work. There was also a lot of stress and parties are a way to relieve that stress. As far as the football players sending messages, they are student leaders, we are not Podunk U. The players will send a message and students will listen, they will also listen to Tressel.
Parsa: My apologies for being late. I had discussions in class and students felt that the university was overreacting.
Stuck: We need more people involved on campus than just Student Life. We need to work together; this is the first time that it has been brought up that faculty can make a difference.
Loughrey: I think we also need to look to other student organization leaders. We have been having meetings in the Greek community and I think we need to reach out to other student leaders. Tressel has such as huge impact on campus; I think we should capitalize on his role more.
Rocco: We keep coming back to how important faculty members are. Nothing was said in my classes and I have had five classes in the past 2 days. If everyone took that time, at least people would hear about it and be forced to think about it.
Stenta: I think there should be a partnership. Could Student Life professionals comes to classes and help facilitate and then have faculty come to student places like the Residence halls, the union, Larkins, etc. I think this is an important consideration for the new projects on campus: creating places for dialogue.
Early: Talked a lot about things to stop, but how can we start new traditions?
Douce: Message that needs to start is that by being a bystander you are also guilty.
Cormier: I would like to propose a resolution, but suggest the following changes:
Hollingsworth: We suggested the use of "eliminate" instead of "curb" because we have seen some success. Also, we need to include bystanders in language as involved. Therefore use "active and passive."
Shipley: I suggest we change "sanity" to "sensibility."
Busch: Suggest that we include a review of the student code of conduct in the last resolved clause.
Cormier: When we say review, we will just look at needed areas, not entire code.
Resolution passes 12-0-0.
Cormier asked for members to volunteer for ad hoc committee to review these issues. Shipley volunteered as faculty member, will need USG representative and Student Life designee.
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