Advocacy Week 2010 at Ohio State focused on the environment, equality and education, hosted last week by Undergraduate Student Government’s government relations committee. President E. Gordon Gee, Chancellor Eric Fingerhut of the Ohio Board of Regents and other state and city officials attended USG’s fifth annual “An Evening for Higher Education,” the final event of the week held at the Ohio Statehouse.
“For 200 years plus, people in this state said that whatever the challenges were, whatever the opportunities were, we turned to higher education to lead the way,” said Chancellor Fingerhut, who had climbed on a chair in the atrium of the Statehouse to get the attention of the attendees and then decided to remain there while addressing the crowd. “I hope you’re proud to live in a state that sees that its past, present and its future [are] all built around higher education,” he said.
“I wish more of my colleagues would be here,” said State Rep. Ted Celeste. He said the event would be more effective if it was at a time when more legislators were present and students could meet with them in there offices.
“I’m here in Columbus so it’s easy for me to do this,” said Celeste, whose district across the Olentangy River represents West Campus but not the rest of OSU.
State treasurer, Kevin Boyce, said that if students take the time to put on a forum to interact with elected officials, then those officials should take the time to come down and hear some of the issues.
“Tonight, we talked about the brain drain of students leaving Ohio after they graduate; we talked about renewable energies and markets and the kinds of jobs that a lot of graduates are looking for,”
Boyce said. “These are things that as an elected official I can take back and work on to help our state.
“Every year this dinner is about bringing students and legislators together to work in partnership to advocate for continued support, access and funding for higher education,” said Erica Wong, a member of USG’s Government Relations Committee. “This year we wanted to expand it so we made it into a week-long event where we held several events that advocated towards the promotion of environmental sustainability and equality on campus.”
The public forum about the environment last Tuesday focused on alternative energy options for the state of Ohio, including nuclear power, and the Wednesday session on promoting and advocating equality on campus, with an emphasis on Islamic racial profiling after 9/11.
“Unfortunately because this was our first year, a lot of students on campus did not know about it, so we didn’t necessarily have the grand turnout that we wanted,” said Wong, a second-year in finance. “We’re hoping that Advocacy Week expands and continues annually and becomes something that students expect to see every year.”
