Ohio General Election on Nov 8

Ohio General Election will take place tomorrow (Nov 8). Ohio's voters will decide the fate of candidates and issues on their ballot, according to the State official website.

Senate Bill 5, known as limiting collective bargaining rights, is equivalent with Issue 2 in the referendum, remains as a hot topic in agenda.

Advocating activities and campaigns, with the enormous support of social media are being conducted everywhere for a NO on Issue 2.

Ohio University students can vote from 6:30 a.m. - 7:30 p.m on Tuesday, Nov. 8 at the following places:

1. Baker University Center

2. Jefferson Hall Library

3. City Hall

4. Community Center

View Where to vote in a larger map

Can Political Issue Affect Students?

Followed up with the previous post about Senate Bill 5; a recent poll on The Post, OU student-run newspaper revealed that 26% of the total 57 responses think that Student Senate should not waste time on partisan politics.

Frankly speaking, many OU students do not really care about SB5 because they think it is purely political and there is no evidence showing quantified loss caused by SB5 on students. Students might protest against something intangible like tuition increase but "collective bargaining rights" is sort of a vague perception. If OU disseminates information about SB5 to students and its possible impact to the school, the level of understanding can be reached, even neutrally.

We will wait to see final decision of OU Student Senate to take a stance on SB5 or not. It will be hard for Student Senate to survive over criticism if they disappoint many students who keep demanding to add this issue to their agenda.

Do OU Students Really Care about Senate Bill 5?

Senate Bill 5 (SB5) is now a very controversial political issue in the State of Ohio. Signed into law by Gov. Kasich in March, SB5 will limit collective bargaining rights of public employees. Ohio SB5 veto referendum, known as Issue 2, is scheduled to appear on the general election ballot in November to repeal SB5.

Athens County, the poorest county of Ohio is expected to suffer from SB5 as most of its public employees are working at Ohio University (OU), the largest employer of the whole county. A protest of about 250 OU students took place on campus in March to oppose the cutting budget proposal of Gov. Kasich in higher education sector which OU belongs to. Last Wednesday, more than 50 OU students showed up at the OU Student Senate weekly meeting to speak out on SB5 and request the Student Senate to take a stance on it.

However, the above mentioned groups of students is modest compared with the total of 20,857 students, Athens campus alone. A large number of students do not care or even know about SB5. Many students think it is a political issue and not directly affecting them. "OU students are no different than most people in the world. A lot of people don't pay attention to politics", said David Smith, a student at OU. From the side of OU Student Senate, they seems to have the same opinion said by President Kyle Triplett : “The opinion of the Student Senate executives is that it’s not Student Senate’s role to get involved in issues that are purely political".

We will need to wait for an official figure to know exactly how many students really care about SB5, how many of them sign in form to vote against it and for them SB5 is just a State issue or OU-related issue.