With Ohio University’s senior vice president for finance and administration stepping down in December to take the job as executive vice president of the Rhode Island School of Design, campus leaders are confident that the university's tough budget-cutting process will run smoothly in his absence.

The university, facing at least a $10.5 million cut in funds for the upcoming fiscal year, is in the middle of a budget process that is looking at areas to increase efficiencies while cutting academic programs and other expenses.

Ohio University’s departing top financial officer said Monday he was pleasantly surprised when the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design approached him with a job offer, to become the school’s new executive vice president.

“It wasn’t on my radar screen,” said Bill Decatur, who is stepping down as OU’s senior vice president for finance and administration to take the job at RISD in Providence. “But as I looked into it, I quite frankly became intrigued, and excited.”

The Athens County Republican Party and Ohio University College Republicans are asking the county Board of Elections to investigate an alleged offer by the College Democrats to pay people to vote, or else pay a bounty to others who find people to vote.

Representatives of the College Democrats, however, said an e-mail cited as evidence has been misconstrued, and that nobody intended to offer anyone money to vote.

A bone-marrow drive held at Ohio University’s Baker Center last year was such a success that Student Senate Wednesday discussed making the drive an annual event at the university by reaching out to freshmen, new students, and students who did not participate in the first-ever drive in 2008.

In the wake of Ohio University Faculty Senate's mainly negative appraisal of President Roderick McDavis, some faculty leaders are suggesting ways the president could improve his relations with faculty while improving shared governance at the university.

The appraisal rated McDavis poorly in eight of 10 categories with 76 percent of faculty members who responded rating the president negatively on how he responds to input and concerns of the faculty when making decisions. More than 73 percent said the president is not an effective leader for the university. They listed shared governance and "putting faculty first" as McDavis' biggest shortcomings.

A bone-marrow drive held at Ohio University’s Baker Center last year was such a success that Student Senate Wednesday discussed making the drive an annual event at the university by reaching out to freshmen, new students, and students who did not participate in the first-ever drive in 2008.

Scripps College of Communication Sen. Matthew Beddingfield said during Senate’s general body meeting Wednesday that organizer Erica Cohen, an at-large senator during the 2008-09 academic year, was the driving force behind last year’s bone-marrow drive.

When an unidentified student or faculty member noticed a person entering Ohio University’s Copeland Hall Thursday morning with a firearm, the person contacted the OU Police Department about it, obviously thinking it might be somebody looking for trouble.

After a check with local law-enforcement agencies did not reveal any police officer known to be at the building, according to a news release from the university, officials activated the building fire alarm and evacuated the building at 9:50 a.m. Soon after, the release said, officials realized that the armed individual was a legitimate police officer in plainclothes visiting as a guest speaker in a class in Copeland.

The building “was evacuated for a very short time with minimal disruption to classes,” and then was reopened as of 10:05 a.m., the release said.

OU Police Chief Andrew Powers and David Hopka, assistant vice president for safety and risk management, led the response to the incident. Powers commended the person who alerted OUPD.

“She did exactly what she should have done and called the police,” Powers said in the release. “We minimized the interruption to faculty and students. Everything went just as you would have wanted it to in a textbook incident.”

Areas surrounding Ohio University’s Bob Wren baseball stadium will be closed to the public effective immediately, the university announced Tuesday.

A recent inspection – prompted by an alert from the U.S. Consumer Product Safety Commission – found structural cracks in all six of the stadium’s light poles, the release said. Because of these defects, the poles will be removed as soon as possible. However, in the interim, the following areas will be closed to the public:

Ohio University’s senior vice president for finance and administration, William Decatur, has been selected as the next executive vice president for the Rhode Island School of Design. OU President Roderick McDavis announced Decatur’s departure in a memo to the university community on Wednesday.

“While it is always difficult to say goodbye to a valued member of our team, I know you will join me in extending gratitude to Mr. Decatur for all he has done for Ohio University and offering congratulations to him as he moves on to Rhode Island in January 2010,” McDavis wrote in the announcement.

Ohio University’s first-year provost and executive vice president earlier this week took a step toward achieving “shared governance” at the university.

The perceived lack of shared governance has been a persistent criticism of the Roderick McDavis administration and Pam Benoit’s predecessor as provost.