Ohio State President Walter “Ted” Carter Jr. speaking at a press conference that happened this past Monday. Credit: Ally Wolfe | Campus Senior Writer
Convocation is an opportunity for incoming freshmen to get to know Ohio State and it’s traditions but Ohio State President Walter “Ted” Carter Jr. opened up on a variety of topics, including Senate Bill 1 compliance, the size of the incoming freshman class and international student trends, in a pre-ceremony media conference.
Before addressing any of those, he shared his excitement for the Texas v. Ohio State matchup this Saturday.
“It’s going to be a great game,” Carter said. “The weather looks even better. I anticipate it’s going to be a crazy atmosphere.”
Carter said the university intentionally set the enrollment rates for this current and past year. The Class of 2028 — last year’s incoming freshmen — was larger than others, per prior Lantern reporting. The university has a lower enrollment rate for the current freshmen.
According to Carter, the university should expect 8,200 undergraduates enrolled this year with more specific numbers coming at a later date.
“Last year’s increase in numbers was also intentional because we’ve underperformed for a couple of years,” Carter said. “We’re still going to be somewhere around 66-67,000 ballpark-ish for students.”
Carter mentioned the high retention rate from last year’s freshman class — almost 9,000 students.
“Out of the 9,530 students that came in as a freshman class last year, 94 percent returned,” Carter said. “It’s an exceptionally high retention rate.”
Carter also acknowledged that the university is anticipating a drop in international student enrollment, which he said he is concerned about.
“I really embrace having international students on our campus,” Carter said. “I sailed all over the world, 38 years in the Navy. I visited 100 countries myself. I know the value of having that international relationship at a campus like Ohio State, so we’re hoping that continues to spread.”
This follows the travel bans from the federal government on over a dozen countries, as well as students having their visas revoked, per prior Lantern reporting. International students made up around 8 percent of the Columbus campus, according to the university’s 2024 enrollment report.
Carter went on to talk about the recent chalking ban, prohibiting all messages and images drawn on campus sidewalks, and said that the amount of complaints received by the university about reported incidents took up a lot of time and resources from his team.
“We had so many complaints about things, just changing a lot of people’s minds, a lot of rhetoric out there,” Carter said. “We had to erase most of what was on there, that’s a huge administrative burden for the university to have to go through all that to remove things that were not supposed to be on the sidewalk. So all this does is really free up my team to remove anything that gets put on the sidewalk.”
Carter said that the ban was “not trying to prevent anybody’s free speech.”
Carter also talked about the Center for Belonging and Social Change transforming into Buckeye Commons to comply with Senate Bill 1 policies to remove diversity, equity and inclusion programming. He said all students can go to find success and get support for just about anything that they could possibly want.
“We have not had impacts to any scholarships, to any students nor to any employment of any of our students,” Carter said.
Carter added that Ohio State’s strategy is to “take care of all walks of life.”
When asked about the Ghislaine Maxwell, a convicted sex offender and friend to Jeffery Epstein, tapes from the Department of Justice that claim close ties between Epstein and Les Wexner — who supplied a $100 million donation to the Wexner Medical Center, which is named after him — Carter said that he has not seen anything that has made him reconsider changing the name of the medical center and other facilities.
Carter took time to acknowledge the return of former Ohio State President, Gordon Gee, to campus working part-time as a consultant.
“I’ve known Gordon for a long time. I’m excited that he was willing to come and help support our future strategy that we’re working with,” Carter said.
Carter acknowledged that the regional campuses are also doing “very good” in enrollment and that he is “optimistic” about how the branch schools are operating.
Carter expressed excitement for the implementation of AI in classes across campus.
“We’re financially stable and stronger than most campuses that I know,” Carter said. “Our Ph.D. programs are alive as well, and one of the big initiatives that we are opening with Education for Citizenship 2035, is this thing called AI Fluency.”
Per prior Lantern reporting, the AI Fluency program will help students learn AI skills in their general education launch seminar and GenAI workshops.
Carter took time to talk about what else he is looking forward to for the upcoming year, including events like move-in weekend.
“It instills your faith in this generation that we’re going to be great going into the future,” Carter said. “I’m really excited about that, having everybody back on campus.”
When asked about his concerns for the upcoming year, Carter said he does not have anything he is really worried about but it will be a lot of work executing their plans for the upcoming school year.
“Obviously athletics is a complex field right now, so making sure we are navigating that well takes a lot of attention with Ross Bjork, our athletic director, but I’m excited about it all and wouldn’t be here doing this if I didn’t feel good.”
When asked about his score prediction for the game this Saturday, Carter answered, “My only prediction is victory. How’s that?”
