It has been one year since protesters, upset over the restructuring of the Office of Minority Affairs, took part in a sit-in on the second floor of Bricker Hall. The sit-in, which began last year on May 11, lasted for eight days and was considered a tremendous success. Some protesters, however, are still awaiting changes they say are slow to arrive.”The process of getting things accomplished has been slow and dragged out,” said Sakinah Love Ali, president of the Afrikan Student Union. “There is still a constant struggle for communication between the students, interim Vice Provost Barbara Rich and the acting assistant to the vice provost W. Maurice Shipley.”Ali said that communication lines have however, been greatly improved between the students, OSU President William “Brit” Kirwan and Ed Ray, the executive vice president and provost for the Office of Academic Affairs.The Afrikan Student Union along with the Ohio State chapter for the National Association for the Advancement of Colored People was largely responsible for organizing the protest last year. They also had the support of many other groups such as the Ohio Legislative Black Caucus and the Lutheran Campus Ministries.Protesters demanded that no restructuring of the Office of Minority Affairs should take place until the new vice provost of that office and the new president of the university were in place. They were concerned restructuring the office would harm services and staff essential to black student development, and that the restructuring was taking place without the participation of the students it was meant to help.They said that ousting Rich had nothing to do with her job performance, but the fact that they wanted a more permanent vice provost position created before restructuring took place. Rich’s plans for restructuring the department would have put two bureaucrats between students and the vice provost of the office. She was not available for comment.A year has gone by and OSU has its new president, but the interviewing process for the new vice provost for the Office of Minority Affairs is still under way.Five candidates for the job have been selected, and three of them have already been interviewed this month. The interviews have been conducted with the input of students from the Afrikan Student Union and OSU’s chapter for the NAACP.”The students who took part in the protest hung in there and now we have the Student Advisory Council (SAC) in place, as well as interviews for the new provost job and the creation of Students for Equal Rights and Justice (SERJ),” Ali said.Dara Cooper, vice president of the OSU chapter for the NAACP, said the main thing they want to see come from the sit-ins, is that office of the interim provost be terminated in June, and that the office of a new vice provost take its place.”We had to negotiate with the university, but we came to an agreement. We are certainly pleased at the developments since the sit-in,” Cooper said. “The student advisory counsel is now in place and the Frank W. Hale Black Cultural Center will also not be merged with any other department.” “Ed Ray came out and helped to finalize the plan and now it remains to be seen whether we get a new vice provost,” Cooper said. Malcolm Baroway, communications director for the university, said that issues of diversity have been at the top of Kirwan’s agenda.”The appointment of a new provost in the Office of Minority Affairs and the cleaning up of dissatisfactions are part of the address he gave when he came to this university,” Baroway said. “Those issues will still be dealt with very strongly.”