'Townies' build a life with OU

by S. Veronica Siek
Staff Writer

"The image of a townie is someone wearing Carhartt overalls, chewing a wad of tobacco about the size of a golf ball, always wearing a pocket knife or a boot knife and working boots," said Matt Robertson, leaning over his coffee. "It's kind of what they would call a run-down lifestyle. People actually have to go out and work for a living with their back rather than their brains."

Wearing a simple black leather jacket, baseball cap, jeans, Nike tennis shoes and no visible knives of any kind, Ohio University junior Matthew Robertson resembles the average OU student more than the "townie" stereotype.

"Most people are surprised when I tell them I'm from the Athens area," he said. "I suppose my accent doesn't give it away."

However, Robertson said his Athens upbringing made him feel he "stuck out" when he began attending OU.

"That's when I really started to feel I was kind of an outcast," he said. "I've lived here all my life and most people here haven't. I didn't notice much when I was growing up because I was always around other people like myself."

Robertson grew up in Albany and attended Alexander High School. He said aside from the fact his brother attended OU and the occasional trips he made into Athens for a movie or sporting event, he did not have much contact with the university when he was growing up.

But Athens High School senior Liz Simpson said the opposite is true for her.

"Everything in Athens kind of revolves around the university," Simpson said. "That's why I'm here and why most of my friends are here – their parents work for the university."

OU employs many Athens County residents, and many professors choose to live in Athens with their families.

Each day after class, chemical engineering professor Michael Prudich, also a father and Athens resident, returns to his closet until it is time to come out and teach the next course. At least, this is what some of his students might think, he said.

"Occasionally I'll see students from my classes uptown or at Kroger's or something," said Prudich. "They're always kind of surprised."

The proximity of OU to his home was a "bonus" of working at OU, he said, especially compared to the 45-minute commute he faced each morning when he worked in Pittsburgh. He said the safety of Athens' small-town atmosphere has made it a good place to raise his family.

"We've had three children go through the schools here, and we're very pleased with them," said Prudich.

He said his students are surprised when he talks about his life outside of teaching. When his three children were younger, joking about his children's snow days drew puzzled glances from students.

"I don't think that OU students realize that professors have children," said Alaina Shearer, an OU senior whose father taught at OU. "They don't realize that there's schoolchildren here; there's families, hundreds of them."

Shearer also said the city of Athens is separate from OU-both politically and socially.

"The university and the community are interconnected in so many ways, but at the same time they're isolated from one another," she said.

Athens is much different when OU is not in session, she added.

"When the students left on their break, it'd kind of feel like a ghost town," she said. "On the other hand, it was great. There were more parking spaces, no lines at Kroger's. But towards the end you kind of start to miss them."

Alexander High School sophomore B.J. Allman agreed that Athens is dominated by the university.

"I think that this whole county revolves around OU," Allman said. "If OU is shut down, then the whole town shuts down. If the college students leave, then half the stores close, and their hours change and everything."

Shearer, whose father was an assistant professor at the Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine, moved to Athens with her family from Muskegon, Mich., when she was in the ninth grade. Athens High School was nothing like she expected. She came from a small, private Catholic school, and Athens High was a completely different environment.

"My first day on the bus, everyone had on these cowboy hats. I thought it was going to be a country school," she said.

Later she learned that the abundance of cowboy hats was because of "Hat Day" at Athens High. After her first impressions, Shearer said Athens grew on her.

"It was the coolest place I'd ever been," she said.

Shearer said she loved Athens High, but she has noticed a divide between the students whose parents are professors and those whose parents have blue-collar jobs.

"There's always divisions when you have two different groups of people from different economic levels," Shearer said. "But at the same time, we went to school with them; we didn't see them much. We were usually in the honors and comprehensive classes."

Simpson said there is a division and suggested it exists because the parents who work at OU make more money.

However, Athens High School Principal Mike Meeks said he has not seen such a division within the school.

"We're in a phasing system, and we do group students according to ability, but I don't agree that there's a division," he said. "We want all the kids to be treated equally. We try to meet the needs of all students."