With the new school year finally under way and a whole new class of freshmen entering our campus to carry on the great traditions of Ohio State, we bid a fond farewell to Karen A. Holbrook.

I have done my fair share of research on Holbrook. With her recent departure came some controversial comments and accusations regarding our university. I hate to say, “I told you so,” about her, but first impressions can often be correct. I prodded Holbrook for an interview when she was still president here, but she blew me off multiple times. All I wanted was to get her side of things. Even after her empty promises and total disregard, I still kept my mouth shut about how I truly felt about her.

Holbrook’s downright malicious comments given in an interview with Florida Gulf Coast University was a shocking slap in the face for OSU alumni and students, but came as no great shock to me. “When you win a game, you riot. When you lose a game, you riot. When spring comes, you riot. African-American Heritage Festival weekend, you riot.” Am I happy she was not awarded the position? You bet.

It seems as though Holbrook cannot get past her first year at OSU in 2002, because that was the last time there was any sort of riot. Granted, there are sure to be little incidents across campus, but those sometimes occur when students decide to be surly. If she had had her priorities straight, she would have noticed that several of the people arrested in the riots were not students, however, Holbrook attempts to negate this fact in her skewed perception of OSU students.

“They think it’s fun to flip cars, to really have absolute drunken orgies. … I don’t want to be at a place that has this kind of culture as a norm,” Holbrook also stated in the interview.

As a senior at OSU, my own experiences support the contrary. I have spent years at this university and have never personally seen or heard of any rioting. The students do not focus their energies on “flipping cars” or hosting “drunken orgies.” Yet Holbrook maintains that the school and its students are ruined and are obsessed with drunkenness and debauchery. Holbrook said she would rather “go to a wonderful brunch with a lovely group of people and walk over to the stadium and sit in the box” for “a perfectly lovely day.” What a coincidence, because most students and alumni do the same thing. Except for the box seats, I, too, walk to the game and watch it just like 109,000 other people. After that, I go home – but do not flip cars or have drunken orgies. So what if students want to drink and have a good time after the game? It is not an orgy, but merely students enjoying their youth and their college experience. As long as they are not destroying property or causing general mayhem there should be no problem with it.

Holbrook claims she was told (by the late Bill Hall) that if she went around the neighborhoods, she would not believe what went on. Well, the truth is, as our university president she failed to explore her own school or surrounding campus. I would have gladly shown her what goes on. Yes, there is drinking, but it is all in good sport and no one gets hurt, except for those few dumb enough to test their luck against natural selection.

After the interview with Florida Gulf Coast University was published, Holbrook said, “Maybe it was a little melodramatic.” As a former president, it is outrageous that Holbrook so callously slandered our great school. In her eagerness to Buckeye-bash, she has shown herself for who she is: a malicious hypocrite. Holbrook might have degrees upon degrees, but degrees cannot teach you how to relate to people, nor do they give you an understanding of youth. That severed relationship with the more than 50,000 students attending the university made her a bad president. If she had taken some time out of her busy schedule to actually do some research on her own two feet, then she might have been able to understand the social culture of the youth that she oversaw. Holbrook is old enough to know that you can’t believe everything you hear from people. Hearsay does not hold up in court, so why did she find it enough to condemn the entire university?

Ben Schwarzwalder is a senior in journalism. He can be reached at [email protected].