“We can Reach for Excellence…”

On February 18th, 2021, President Kristina Johnson of the Ohio State University issued her first State of the University Address. In her address, she touted the university’s position in the nation as uniquely key to resolving the COVID-19 pandemic, systemic racism, economic injustice, and posited Ohio State as the arbiter of “opportunity.” She cited “complex issues” and claimed the university would solve them with complex solutions that meet the calling of our times. Later on in the address, she introduced a 4-point plan highlighting ‘excellence’ in Academic; Research and Creative Expression; Entrepreneurship and Partnership; and Service to Ohio, the nation, and the world. In her explanation of these four goals, she stressed the university would adapt and respond to the problems it faces in a decade with a plan to hire 300 new and diverse faculty members; equity in pay; faculty research and development; “corporate engagement” with companies like Honda, JPMorgan, and Chase for start-ups and spin-ups; and investment in STEM and the arts, as well as a commitment to anti-racism and equity in education. Her ambitious announcements were capped off with a heartwarming story of her grandfather contributing his life’s work to instructing African Americans and women in engineering who were prevented from obtaining an engineering education; he launched the “Casino Technical Night School” to grant them an engineering education that she said would change their lives for the better. Her grandfather, she said, is honored to this day by black leaders for his achievements. “We can reach for excellence,” Johnson concludes, “and we are well on our way.”

Listening to Dr. Kristina Johnson’s premiere State of the University Address, one can draw but a single conclusion: the Ohio State University is on the up-and-up. There are buckets of cash from magnanimous donors to dump into brand-new buildings and administrative positions, optimistic plans to introduce a “debt-free” bachelor’s degree, and countless oblique references to anti-racism and other social justice buzzwords. But is such a roseate picture the most realistic one?

One can hardly fault Johnson for wishing to portray her first semester with the university as a resounding success, and there are some achievements worthy of commendation. And yet, the address is also afflicted by an incredibly narrow vision, one which portrays the university’s problems as simple and resolvable with a few new programs here & there and a kind word or two. Unfortunately, many of the ills which face the university are not so easily solved and not so easily explained away. As university leaders trumpet new investments in lavish new buildings and attention-grabbing corporate partnerships, students — particularly low-income students and those of color — experience a decidedly different reality, one featuring indefensibly low pay, a markedly higher propensity to face penalties for violations compared to their more-privileged counterparts, and a consistently superficial or dismissive response to concerns about racism and discrimination on campus (a recent viral tweet exemplified this unbecoming tendency).

The result of these inequities is staggering and inhumane; as underprivileged students face barriers to their achievement and success, the university rewards mediocrity and the status quo. Always quick to dismiss actual progress in economic and social spheres, Ohio State fails on its promise to “deliver opportunity to everyone in the state of Ohio.” Even as President Johnson hails the university’s foundations as a land-grant state institution, the university refuses to comment on the school’s ongoing lack of transparency in funding sources, empiric abuse of administrative power against marginalized communities, sexual abuse, and much more. The goal of any “profit-based” (Ohio State is listed as a non-profit, but their donors and shareholders get rich off of the university) organization under capitalism is to garner as much cash with as little redistribution as possible; Ohio State has never been the exception to that rule.

 

While most students are merely a statistic to a university as large as Ohio State, BIPOC and LGBTQ+ students represent the bottom of the barrel when it comes to material investment and advancement.

 

To that end, its aspirations for corporate sponsorship and lavish infrastructure investments come at a great cost: the students and faculty who risked everything to get here lack the protection and investment to secure their futures. While most students are merely a statistic to a university as large as Ohio State, BIPOC and LGBTQ+ students represent the bottom of the barrel when it comes to material investment and advancement. Scholarships are named in honor of minority pioneers in their respective careers and occupations, but the changes necessary to foment true intersectional equity are always absent. In the end, contrary to the fundamental profit motives that drive the actions of OSU and its affiliates, we all know the true reason why: profit above all else. Seeking ways to transform campus policing, ending starvation wages in university positions, preventing various forms of abuse, and ensuring every student is treated with respect, dignity, and provided with the needs to succeed are all apparently unachievable at the same time. Means-testing and austerity all contribute to the attempts at subverting activists, breaking up protests, and subjecting student workers to unsafe conditions and unacceptably low wages. The university, under its current model, would be unable to sustain itself. No longer would it be able to purchase new plots of land for business partnerships and hospital additions. No longer would the Columbus Police Department and their partners in the University Police be able to overpolice the student body. No longer would investors like JPMorgan and Chase, Nike, and Honda be willing to operate as investors and donors. To the university, this would mean almost certain bankruptcy and calamity. To those of us who can see through the guise of benevolence and benign platitudes, we simply ask, “where do we start to end this cycle of abuse?”

 

Listening but not Hearing

The university is understandably fond of making gestures to serving students, but it has also displayed a pattern of truly considering students’ concerns only when they do not necessitate a sacrifice on the part of administrators or privileged interests. The university might be said to listen to students’ concerns without hearing them.

The school’s repeated resistance to calls to disassociate from the Columbus Police Department is a critical example. The community watched with horror as protestors — including Joyce Beatty, a sitting member of the United States Congress — were treated like animals, doused with pepper-spray, and physically threatened during summer protests. In response to a chorus of concerned students and community members questioning the wisdom of continuing to lavish millions of school funds each year on an association with the body, administrators’ response might be compared to that of a young child, covering his ears and singing “la la la, I can’t hear you.” Disassociating from the CPD is not some fringe proposal; even the OSU Student Government has tendered a recommendation for the step, and SG is not, as a rule, a hotbed of wide-eyed radicalism. But these calls have elicited what end?

This indifference — nay, hostility — towards student activism when it strays from their narrowly defined parameters of acceptability extends to the shameful treatment of concerned citizens during the battle over the university’s plans to open a fracked gas plant on campus. The proposal invited a number of legitimate questions: Why not redouble investment in renewable energy instead? What are going to be the long-term ecological implications? How will the project’s benefits (and costs) be distributed? What about potential health effects? The university’s response to these questions was a fusion of indifference and hostility.

 

The university might be said to listen to students’ concerns without hearing them.

 

When students at a community hearing hosted by PUCO (the Public Utilities Commission of Ohio) began raising legitimate concerns about potential conflicts of interest of some of the actors involved in the plan, they were abruptly cut off. Although the event was not hosted by OSU, its connection to the school was certainly unflattering. This treatment might be seen as an allegory to the wider issue of student activism: concerned constituents are cut off, ignored, or listened to and then summarily dismissed. “I’m sorry you feel that way”-style responses are enjoying a renaissance when they ought to be relegated to status as a Ghost of Responsibility-Evading Excuses Past.

And this condescension extends even to seemingly trivial actions like the school’s decision to suspend the program by which students receive free COTA fares. The e-mail to students about this decision framed it as a net gain, not a loss, and in theory, this proposition sounds sensible for students who are taking classes from home or whose all-online course load doesn’t require venturing far from one’s dorm room. But, as is the case with many of the school’s other decisions, this one has a distinct adverse impact on a subset of students: those who dwell off-campus and don’t own a car. As related by a student who asked that she remain nameless, a number of OSU students are required by their university jobs to travel each week to a faraway part of campus for a COVID test. Alas, their finances prohibit them from car ownership, and so they need to take the bus to get their test… the bus which, under normal circumstances, would be fare-free, but which thanks to the school’s decision is not. They proceeded to contact the school for help. The school’s advice? Take your car. How much enlightenment can be credibly claimed by an institution whose representative’s default response is to practically berate a socioeconomically disadvantaged student for not owning an automobile?

 

A Splurge of Funds

Affording the university the benefit of the doubt, we might assume that their decisions are borne of economic necessity: perhaps they’d love to pay their student workers a fairer wage, to provide for transportation for underprivileged students, to shepherd in a new policing model which champions prevention rather than penalty and in which public safety officials are held accountable for their own actions. And perhaps the reason they are inert on each of these initiatives is one of cold hard cash — namely, there being an insufficient amount to go around. On some level, given trends in funding for public colleges over the last decade, this defense might appear solid.

But if that’s the logic behind the administration’s inaction on meaningful social justice initiatives, then there’s a crucial counterpoint: the money they’re happily committing to other, glitzier efforts… to say nothing of the staggering budget surpluses they run year after year. Indeed, if finances are the impediment to the aforementioned student-driven efforts, then the university appears to have pulled a cash-covered rabbit out of a hat to finance select causes.

In all seriousness, it wasn’t a cash-covered rabbit; it was, more likely, benefactors with money to donate and a wish list of causes towards which the money would be put. Yet, one wonders whether some savvy financial reallocation might have permitted some of the money freed up by that charitable donation to be put towards projects to further benefit the most marginalized students instead.

One also wonders how much leverage the university might have used to parlay some of that magnanimity into a seed fund for meaningful, desperately-needed reforms instead. Perhaps it’s easier to persuade donors to give money if in return their names can be affixed to new buildings or benches or paths. But OSU’s architectural needs are considerably less grave than their social justice needs at the moment; one longs for a new approach to donations, as long as the funding structure demands such reliance. What if donors could instead help to finance programs to protect public safety without an overreliance on police, to boost student workers’ wages, and to improve compliance with COVID precautions? The “Mr. Moneybags Public Safety Reform Initiative” might not have the same ring as a new office, public meeting place, or outdoor ornament, but it would be a marvelous step towards making good on the worthy goals alluded to in Johnson’s address. And if the donors say no? The funds saved by the university each year post-CPD disassociation would go a long way towards financing those changes, too.

 

A Facade of Social Responsibility

The university’s defenders might contend that many of the aforementioned stories are ones which, although tragic, cannot be blamed solely on the university, that external parties bear much of the blame too. This contention oughtn’t be discarded out of hand, but it also shouldn’t be used as a Get Out of Jail Free card by which ethically debatable decisions can be pinned solely on other unjustly-run institutions — especially in light of the numerous instances in which the university has, under its own volition, acted counter to the values which it espouses.

One late January night, a lovely snowfall lured over one hundred mostly-maskless students outside to frolic, toss snowballs, and cram themselves into school-owned dumpsters and moving carts which they proceeded to push down a hill at which another crowd of students stood. This entire debacle was a bald violation of health guidelines put forward by the school, the governor, the CDC, and virtually anyone with more than an iota of common sense. And yet, when campus police were summoned to the scene, they declined to send everyone back inside or call for reinforcements; instead, they opted to pose for selfies with the students, and one even joined in a round of dumpster-shoving.

Miraculously, that potential superspreader event appears not to have had as crushing an impact as feared, according to the data furnished by the university’s COVID dashboard. Still, that doesn’t excuse the school’s inaction in the face of selfish and irresponsible behavior any more than “… but no one was killed” would excuse a police officer who lets a drunk driver off with a warning. COVID, though it’s stricken down people from all walks of life, has had a disproportionate impact on lower-income and BIPOC students; one might interpret the laissez-faire treatment of the snow lovers as part of a larger pattern of indifference towards social justice when it conflicts with optics or special interests.

The roster of manufacturers of university spirit wear provides another source of worry: many of the brands manufacturing OSU-licensed shirts, hoodies, and more have been linked to factories which employ labor practices that might be described as ethically debatable at best and downright exploitative at worst, from sweatshops to sub-living wages to sexual harassment; staples of the spirit store, such as Nike and Champion, have been linked to said scandals, an in spite of cursory efforts at improvements, their complicity in ongoingly wretched working conditions is chilling. At “best,” these brands hide between a painfully convoluted supply chain that obscures which companies are using which factories, making it nearly impossible to hold brands accountable. Said brands often employ that old standby argument, “We don’t own the factories, so we’re not responsible,” but that argument belies the fact that their decision of factories offers an implicit stamp of approval to — and essentially funds — the working conditions therein. (It goes without saying that the vast majority of garment workers are also female and nonwhite; addressing crises like these is central to social justice.) Some might point out that this is a systemic issue, much larger than any one brand, and that even the aforementioned brands’ behavior is par for the course. Broadly speaking, this objection is accurate… but it’s also misleading, for it in no way excuses the brands — and those brands’ big clients — who are complicit in said system.

 

“Ethically made” should be an ethos for all of its licensed apparel, not merely a category like “women’s T-shirts” or “men’s bottoms.”

 

OSU has taken a heartening step towards justice by offering in its bookstore a selection of T-shirts made by Alta Gracia, a Dominican apparel company whose garment workers are unionized and paid a living wage. (Incidentally, their T-shirts are also among the most affordable pieces of clothing at the bookstore.) But ultimately, “ethically made” should be an ethos for all of its licensed apparel, not merely a category like “women’s T-shirts” or “men’s bottoms.” Without a broader commitment to this vision, one couldn’t be faulted for wondering whether the school’s association with AG is more of a shield against criticism than an indication of the university’s values. The university and its bookstore partners wield considerable clout given the former’s status as one of the largest universities, with a massive alumni network and vociferous fan base to boot; it’s time that they put that leverage to good use.

… Are We Well on Our Way?

To be sure, the Ohio State University has done some work to benefit marginalized students, from their financial aid programs, to their Office of Diversity and Inclusion, to their COVID-related programs (such as the “Emergency Pass” and mental health funding). None of this is negated by the aforementioned criticisms. But neither should we allow the University to use these meaningful successes as a fig leaf to obscure the  numerous areas in which they have yet to work for meaningful change. Social justice isn’t achieved by nibbling around the edges; it’s achieved by getting to the core of the issues fueling inequality. We sincerely hope Ohio State will show its commitment to justice in action as much as in word.