Summer News

The special election – covering the controversial issue 1 – was held on Aug. 8 and was rejected by 57% of voters and favored by 43% of voters. In Athens County, 71% of votes were against the measure and 29% were in favor of the measure, according to a New York Times report. The proposed measure, sponsored by Ohio Republicans, would have made any ballot measure amending the state’s constitution require a 60% supermajority from its current simple majority.

The measure would have made it significantly harder to pass constitutional amendments, including the Ohio Right to Make Reproductive Decisions Including Abortion Initiative, which would enshrine abortion rights for Ohioans if it were to pass on the Nov. 7 ballot. That ballot also contains a measure for the legalization of recreational marijuana use for adults over the age of 21.

OU made history in March when it selected its first female president, Lori Stewart Gonzalez. After long discussions about President Hugh Sherman’s potential successors, Gonzalez was named and officially took office on July 1 to fill the role. Gonzalez previously served as the executive vice president and provost for the University of Louisville. Before taking the position of OU president, Gonzalez held her previous job with UofL since April 2021, according to a previous Post report.

In July, Gonzalez hosted a roundtable discussion with student media; she said she wants to focus on four pillars moving forward at OU: discovery, community, engagement and connectedness. During the discussion, she said she wanted to focus on boosting enrollment. She said fewer high school students are attending college after high school, and she wants to invest in different strategies to combat this issue.

OU’s Board of Trustees passed a measure during its June meeting allowing OU’s President to raise tuition to the maximum cap set by the state of Ohio. Governor Mike Dewine signed the biennial budget on July 4, which allows public universities to increase tuition by no more than 3% of what they charged in the previous academic year.

The budget does not violate the OHIO Guarantee+, which states that every student will pay the same tuition and fees for the first four years of college as they did the first year they enrolled. The tuition increase will only affect those enrolling at OU in Fall 2023.

Tom Pyle – former Athens city chief of police – retired this summer after serving in the position for 11 years. Nick Magruder officially took office on July 5, according to a previous Post report. The Civil Service Commission, alongside Pyle, Tom Powell, former APD chief of police and Andy Stone, service-safety director, developed a test that mimicked similar duties of the chief of police to see who could pass the assessment with the highest score. Only experienced APD captains and lieutenants had the opportunity to take it.

Magruder scored the highest of the three candidates. He was notified in late April he would receive the promotion and trained with Pyle for over two months before assuming the role. Magruder said he wants to make the Athens community feel closer to the police department, eventually start a police academy and continue the decreasing trend of violence on weekends involving OU students.

OU was recognized by The Washington Post in March for its sustainability efforts, including reducing food waste from dining halls through composting. The soil created from the composting is used throughout campus for landscaping projects, like flowerbeds, and intramural fields.

The food used to create the soil mostly comes from students’ plates in the dining hall. When they leave food on plates the staff places them into compost bins, which are transported to a composting facility in The Ridges. Sam Crowl, director of sustainability, said composting reduces the university’s carbon footprint by reducing methane-producing material from landfills.