Complete Story
04/17/2015
OU student paper suspends editorial page editor over deal with administration
The Post, Ohio University's student-run newspaper, confirmed Monday that it had suspended its opinion editor for two weeks following discovery of an agreement the editor reportedly made with OU President McDavis and his chief of staff earlier this year.
In an editorial published Monday, The Post's editorial staff said that the opinion editor made an agreement with McDavis and his chief of staff, Jennifer Kirksey, such that if McDavis submitted an op-ed column to The Post, it would be published without any conflicting opinions from The Post's staff for 24 hours.
The editorial said the Post was informed of that agreement by Kirksey after it published an editorial online Sunday, and in print Monday, critical of an opinion piece that McDavis had submitted, which also showed up on the website Sunday.
McDavis's column encouraged students to vote in this week's Student Senate elections (April 14-16); The Post's editorial criticized McDavis's comments saying that, while constructive, they ignored the "elephant in the room" of OU's recent, unpopular decision to move him off campus to a home on Athens' South Side.
According to The Post's Monday editorial, titled "Post Values Editorial Independence,' following publication of that paper's Monday edition, "Kirksey then made us aware of the prior agreement between the opinion editor and the president's office. She also informed us that a meeting between the president and a Post reporter was canceled because we had gone back on our word."
