Student Senate supports Homecoming street closing

by Philip Elliott
THE POST

Ohio University’s Student Senate unanimously adopted a resolution urging the City of Athens to close Court Street on Homecoming Weekend at its first meeting of the academic year last night.

"This is the perfect opportunity to test closing Court Street," said Melanie Johnston, senate vice president and a co-sponsor of the resolution. "(Homecoming) is the one thing we can all get behind."

Homecoming is scheduled for Oct. 20 to 22.

Senate also adopted a resolution endorsing the Athens County Board of Elections decision Tuesday to expand provisional voting to all locations in Athens. Provisional voting lets people change their registered addresses on Election Day and still vote.

"We have to get students to the polls if politicians are going to listen to us," said Eric Morgan, state and federal affairs commissioner and a co-sponsor of the resolution.

In other matters, OU athletic department officials announced that students who use student tickets will be checked randomly to assure they are entitled to use them.

"We’ve had a lot of scalping going on here," said Thomas Boeh, director of OU athletics. "Students pick up tickets and sell them to the general public."

To combat the reselling, the athletic department will confirm student ticket-holders are students by asking to see identification cards at the gate, he said.

"We’ve created and defined a student section," Boeh said. "But we see students in the student section who don’t look like students."

OU will enlarge the student section next year when the university lowers the Peden Stadium field, he said.

The athletic department will ask senate to develop a plan to sell tickets for these "better and more comfortable" seats in the student section, Boeh said.

The university also will expand Bobcat Cash use to Peden either for the 7 p.m. Saturday game against Tennessee Technological University or for the Sept. 23 game against the University of Akron, he said.

Before the meeting, Jim Hintz said senate will establish a committee to evaluate and review the office of judiciaries.

The committee, composed of five to seven senators, will funnel student concerns to the director of university judiciaries, Judy Piercy, Hintz said. Johnston will serve as the chair of the objective committee.

Ed Hastie, president and founder of the Student Civil Rights Union, said he most likely will not be permitted to serve on the committee because it would bias the committee. SCRU is a student organization that has called for reforms of the judiciaries process.

Hintz said the judiciaries review committee will prepare a report by the end of the quarter.