OSU: organizing around the budget

by Tony Vogt, activist, OSU-AAUP

The OSU advocacy chapter, along with The Alliance for a Socially Just University and Allied Students for Another Politics, organized a public presentation by Howard Bunsis on February 24, titled “The OSU Budget: Breaking the Black Box.” The presentation was very well attended (a number of people who were unable to find seats stood in the back for the entire talk). Howard generously made the slides from his talk widely available afterwards, and they are posted on both our own website – along with a video of the talk – and also on the sites of our allies and supporters. The morning before his afternoon talk, Howard also held a training for activists interested in learning how to analyze budgets. This workshop was also well attended. We are planning a public follow up session in the Spring, where faculty, staff, and students can voice the concerns that Howard’s talk highlighted for them, and brainstorm about potential ways to address these concerns. We hope to have Howard skpe in for at least a part of this public assembly. On other fronts, we have asked the OSU administration to outline for us the ways they have responded to the issues of contingent faculty that emerged from our survey (done in collaboration with the Faculty Senate). We asked them to respond by an early February deadline, and when that deadline passed, we again asked them to respond, and received a promise that they would do so within a week. We did finally receive a report from not only the administration, but also the Faculty Senate. We will be doing a close reading of the reports together, and discuss them in our upcoming meetings.