Gadfly of OU administration takes aim at Student Senate presidency
By Mike Ludwig
Campus Reporter
April 28, 2008
Ohio University junior Will Klatt rode the anti-administration wave of the “no-confidence” referendum last-spring and lost the election for Student Senate president to Tim Vonville by a slim margin of 17 votes. Now Klatt’s back on the presidential campaign trail, leading the charge for an eclectic group of Senate candidates.
His ticket is called the Birthday Party, and although the name suggests that the ticket may not be as rigid as its competition, the party’s platform is making a serious critique of the Student Senate and the administrative system it answers to.
Klatt, who co-founded the OU chapter of Students for a Democratic Society (SDS) and has become the face of dissent at OU, wants to lead the charge toward “shared governance.” He’s challenging OU’s alcohol and marijuana policies, and argues that there has to be different punishments for “drinking a beer” and “passing out with a bottle of liquor in your hands.”
The Birthday Party also wants to put students, faculty and staff on the OU Board of Trustees, all voting rights included.
Critics of Klatt and the Birthday Party claim that they’re asking for too much too soon, but the Birthday Party has drawn a surprisingly diverse set of candidates, despite its “radical” platform. The Birthday Party claims to be the most complete ticket of Senate candidates, and it includes College Republicans, Young Democrats, libertarians SDS members, environmentalists, Latino Student Union members and independent activists.
On Friday, Klatt told The Athens NEWS about the Birthday Party’s bold platform and the broad coalition that has formed around it in hopes of taking the OU Student Senate in a new direction.
So, the Birthday Party isn’t a joke?
The Birthday Party is a serious ticket, but we didn’t want a silly acronym. We take our issues seriously, but we don’t take ourselves too seriously. We’re not there to be bureaucrats; we’re there to be advocates.
What issues united the different elements of the Birthday Party?
We want to have a definition for shared governance. We want shared governance to mean what you would imagine it would mean, a shared power relationship between all the constituents. Essentially what we have now is the trustee board and top administrators dictating down to a community how our institution should be run, and I think they live in a culture that is so different from the culture that the faculty and students are living in, and that’s where all these tensions on campus are coming from. We’d like to see a cultural shift, and we want students to see each other as part of the same class, a student class, and it’s in our interest to work with the faculty and staff because some of our goals are very much alike.
How would you like to change the relationship between the student government and top administrators like the Board of Trustees?
We’d like to see two students, two faculty and two staff added to the trustee board as voting members, and I want to make it clear that just to have students voting on the board doesn’t change the power dynamics at all, because then it’s just two people versus eight people, and if you do have a vote, then you’ll be outvoted on everything. At least with six people added, it doesn’t mean necessarily that we’d always get what we want because we would still have to get two people from that class to agree with us on a position, but at least at that point there would be room for negotiation.
How would respond to the argument that the trustees should have the decision-making power they currently hold because they are financially invested in OU?
Well, I think that’s exactly the problem. We shouldn’t base decisions on who has the most money, or who has donated the most money to a particular party. I think our demand is a reasonable and realistic because Gov. Strickland is going to want to put his people on this board, and he’s going to want to appeal to students, faculty and staff, essentially his voting base, so he’s got very little reason to put up a fight about this.
How does the Birthday Party feel about Strickland’s plans to streamline higher education through the University System of Ohio?
We oppose it. Essentially what that program is going to do is de-fund a lot of state institutions. Their argument is that there are too many law schools or too many political science departments in Ohio, so they’re going to streamline that and turn it into a kind of factory process where all the journalism students in Ohio will be required to come to OU, or go to Miami to be medical students. But if you’re getting a college education, then you don’t want to be in an environment where everybody thinks the same.
In the past you’ve opposed the five-year,Vision Ohio plan at Ohio University. How do you plan to deal with it as president?
I think the Birthday Party has its own vision; it’s the student’s vision. I think it’s fundamentally based on different values. I’d say the values that we’re trying to promote are cooperation, friendship, equality, participation in a democratic process, and above all, love.
It appears that the Board of Trustees is not going to facilitate annual evaluations of President McDavis by faculty and students. Do you have any concerns?
It’s been really disappointing to see the Student Senate just let this get steamrolled through. It’s been really good to see Tracy Kelly, the student trustee, stand up for students on this issue, and I’m really excited to work with her next year. I can assure that if there isn’t a formal evaluation that represents students, then we will create our own that will be sent to the people that need to know; Strickland, the trustee board, the community. If the evaluation is of a person that affects all of our lives, then everyone should be able to be a part of that evaluation through a ballot initiative or something like that.
The SDS has been critical of the Student Senate. What are they doing right, what could they be doing better, and what will the Birthday Party do differently?
I think they have done a really good job of taking on budgeting and internal affairs, and they’ve done a good job every year of putting on Take Back the Night and Pride Week. I think when we come to the Senate meetings, we want to pass resolutions with meaning. When I came to Senate meetings this year, it just seemed like either they’re fighting about petty stuff between each other or they’re distracted by miniscule debates, and we don’t have a lot of time to make decisions, and we want to spend that time building something new.
You’re critics have called you a “radical.” How do you respond?
I think they’ve been labeling anyone who challenges the status quo as being outside of their framework. If advocating for students makes me a radical, then I’m a radical. We’re going to be in office for one year, and that’s not a lot time to push for something, and if anything, so you are doing a disservice to the student body for not reaching toward where you want to move to. I think the only irresponsible thing would be to take some kind of track that fundamentally leads us in circles, and we have done that for far too long.
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