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LOVELAND MAGAZINE

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Since 2004

Tag: Bowling Green State University

  • 12 race-based scholarships worth $46,000 weren’t awarded to Ohio University journalism students

    12 race-based scholarships worth $46,000 weren’t awarded to Ohio University journalism students

    That’s only a fraction of $450,000 worth of scholarship money at OU that’s under review after advice from Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost.

    BY:  – Ohio Capital Journal

    Twelve race-based scholarships totaling $46,000 weren’t given out at Ohio University’s E.W. Scripps School of Journalism’s awards banquet this week, said Journalism School Director Eddith Dashiell.

    And that’s only a fraction of the 130 gift agreements that represent $450,000 worth of scholarship money under review by the university after comments Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost made about race-based scholarships after the U.S. Supreme Court ruled against race-conscious admissions.

    “I’m disappointed that the university chose this route,” Dashiell said to the Ohio Capital Journal. “It would have been a clear, very easy way to demonstrate their true commitment to diversity and by cowardly cowering to one person’s opinion about how to interpret the U.S. Supreme Court’s decision has resulted in at least 12 of our students not getting scholarships they need.”

    Ohio University’s scholarship review is ongoing, university spokesperson Dan Pittman said in an email.

    “It would be premature for us to speculate on any potential outcomes, including the scope of impacted scholarships and/or gift agreements,” Pittman said.

    Dashiell said it’s misleading for a university to say the scholarships are still under review at the tail end of spring semester.

    “To me, when the university says their official position is the scholarships are still under review, that is code for they haven’t been given out,” she said. “Scholarship season is over. … The decision has already been made.”

    The Capital Journal reported in March that at least seven Ohio public universities — including OU — are reviewing scholarships. The other universities include Cleveland State University, Kent State University, the University of Akron, the University of Toledo, Youngstown State University and Ohio State University. Bowling Green State University is also reviewing race-based scholarships.

    Cleveland State University said the scholarships in questions remain under review and Bowling Green said it “continues to evaluate next steps.” The rest of the universities did not respond by the Capital Journal’s deadline.

    Dave Yost’s remarks

     Ohio Attorney General Dave Yost. (Photo by Morgan Trau, WEWS.) 

    The day after the Supreme Court decision, Yost sent a letter to Ohio colleges and universities saying his office won’t legally protect someone at a college or university who uses race as a factor.

    Race-based scholarships came up on a January call Yost had with universities — even though scholarships were not mentioned in the Supreme Court decision.

    “What was said in response to a question was after the recent Supreme Court decision, scholarships will need to be looked at to ensure compliance with the law,” Yost’s spokesperson Bethany McCorkle said in a Febuary email. “… Race-based scholarships discriminate on the basis of race in awarding benefits. Therefore, it would follow that such programs are unconstitutional.”

    Not long after that phone call, university faculty and staff across the state got wind that diversity scholarships were under review.

    “A public institution of higher education is … supposed to follow the law,” Dashiell said. “(OU is) following one man’s opinion of what the law is.”

    12 missing scholarships

    Dashiell compared this year’s list of journalism scholarships to last year’s list and noticed 12 scholarships were missing.

    “They aren’t there,” she said. “That’s more than under review. They made a decision. They deleted them.”

    OU’s journalism school is made up of 84% white students, Dashiell said.

    “The diversity scholarships weren’t created to keep white students from getting any money,” she said. “They were designed to help encourage African American students to come to a little bitty town called Athens, Ohio. … To say that these 12 scholarships somehow according to the Ohio Attorney General’s Office, somehow that these scholarships discriminate against whites, is so blatantly racist, I don’t even know how to explain that.”

    Dashiell apologized to the donors whose scholarships weren’t awarded in her speech during Tuesday’s awards banquet.

    “On behalf of the E. W. Scripps School of Journalism: To our donors, please accept our deepest apology for our inability to share your generosity with our students for next academic year,” she said.

    Some of the donors whose scholarships weren’t awarded include Pulitzer Prize winning journalist and columnist Clarence Page and former Washington Post ombudsman Andrew Alexander.

    Dashiell is worried how else the Supreme Court decision is going to be interpreted.

    “If it’s diversity scholarships this year, what are they going to pause next year?” she asked. How are they going to stretch the U.S. Supreme Court decision again?”

    Follow OCJ Reporter Megan Henry on X.

    Megan Henry
    MEGAN HENRY

    Megan Henry is a reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal and has spent the past five years reporting in Ohio on various topics including education, healthcare, business and crime. She previously worked at The Columbus Dispatch, part of the USA Today Network.

    Ohio Capital Journal is part of States Newsroom, the nation’s largest state-focused nonprofit news organization.

    MORE FROM AUTHOR

  • Ohio launching $20 million, decade-long study to improve behavioral health outcomes

    Ohio launching $20 million, decade-long study to improve behavioral health outcomes

    Getty Images illustration of therapy session.

    The study seeks to better understand the root causes of mental illness, substance use disorders, and suicide.

    BY:  – Ohio Capital Journal

    This story is about suicide. If you or someone you know needs support now, call or text 988 or chat 988lifeline.org.

    The state of Ohio is embarking on a decade-long study to better understand the root causes of mental illness, substance use disorders, and suicide.

    The Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services is providing a $20 million grant to fund the State of Ohio Action for the Resiliency (SOAR) study, Ohio Gov. Mike DeWine announced during a press conference Friday.

    “Currently, there’s a lot that we don’t know and the SOAR study is a huge step forward in advancing our understanding of mental health and substance use disorders,” said Ohio State University President Ted Carter. “This study will provide key data that will shape the future of mental health across Ohio and beyond.”

    “There’s nobody that is not affected by this,” Carter said. “There’s somebody that you know in your family, your community, your neighborhood that is affected by this.”

    The study will go for at least a decade with the hope it will continue for decades to come and will look at generations of families from all across Ohio who are affected by mental illness and substance abuse disorders, DeWine said. Funding for the SOAR study comes from the state’s two-year operating budget.

    “We know mental illness and substance use disorders are preventable, treatable, and people can and do recover,” said Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services Director LeeAnne Cornyn.

    The SOAR study has two main projects — the SOAR Wellness Discovery Survey and the SOAR Brain Health Study.

    The wellness study will study as many as 15,000 people across Ohio’s 88 counties to learn how skills may help overcoming adversity. The brain health study will look at 3,600 Ohioan in families to help look at the biological, psychological, and social factors that help people handle adversity.

    “There’s still an awful lot to know about mental health,” DeWine said. “And candidly, the research in this field has not been as robust as it has been in other areas. … It will give us a complete picture of each participant to uncover why, for example, two people in similar circumstances or with similar health have very, very different outcomes.”

    Ohio State University will lead the study and is partnering with hospitals and universities around the state: Bowling Green State University, Central State University, Kent State University, Nationwide Children’s Hospital, Northeast Ohio Medical University, Case Western Reserve University, University Hospital in Cleveland, Ohio University, the University of Cincinnati, Cincinnati Children’s Hospital, University of Toledo and Wright State University.

    The SOAR study will be led by Dr. Luan Phan, chair of the Department of Psychiatry and Behavioral Health at the Ohio State University College of Medicine.

    “Our approach … is to identify the factors that can be modified to reduce risk and build resilience in the face of stress, trauma and adversity,” Phan said. “It’s important to identify what we don’t know — the root causes, the risks, the preventive factors of mental illness, to explain what, I feel, are fairly simple, but fundamental questions: who gets ill? Why did they get ill? How do they get ill? And when do they get ill?”

    Researchers hope this study will do for mental health what the Framingham Heart Study has done for heart disease.

    The Framingham Heart Study was initiated by the United State Public Health Service in 1948 to investigate the risk factors for cardiovascular disease. It has enrolled more than 15,000 study participants.

    “Ohio represents a microcosm of our country,” Phan said. “What we learn here can be disseminated and scaled broadly. Other states will not only copy and adopt what we have done, they will be compelled to do so.”

    Suicide and opioid overdose deaths

    Nineteen Ohioans die prematurely every day from unintentional overdose and suicide, Phan said.

    Opioid overdose deaths increased by more than 300% since 2010 in Ohio, said Dr. John Warner, CEO of Ohio State University Wexner Medical Center.

    Suicide deaths in Ohio increased 8% to 1,766 deaths from 2020 to 2021 — meaning five Ohioans die by suicide every day, according to Ohio Department of Health’s Suicide Demographics and Trends 2021 report.

    The 988 Suicide & Crisis Lifeline received 8,793 calls from Ohio area codes from July 2022 to May 2023, according to the Ohio Department of Mental Health and Addiction Services.

    During that same time, there was an average of 2,014 texts and 2,007 chats per month to 988 from Ohio area codes.

    Follow OCJ Reporter Megan Henry on X.

    Megan Henry
    MEGAN HENRY

    Megan Henry is a reporter for the Ohio Capital Journal and has spent the past five years reporting in Ohio on various topics including education, healthcare, business and crime. She previously worked at The Columbus Dispatch, part of the USA Today Network.

    MORE FROM AUTHOR

  • Reopening begins for Ohio’s colleges: Here’s how it looks

    Reopening begins for Ohio’s colleges: Here’s how it looks

    Susan Tebben

    By Susan Tebben – The Ohio Capital Journal

    Some of Ohio’s colleges and universities have begun moving students in, but the navigation of a school year amid a pandemic is still a balancing act.

    For Miami University, classes began this week, with all undergraduate courses online or remote. The plan is to keep it that way until at least Sept. 21, according to the plan posted to the school’s website. 

    “When we began planning last spring, we had hoped that the COVID-19 pandemic would be in significant decline before classes were scheduled to begin,” Miami president Greg Crawford told students. “Instead, cases are rising in many states. With 40% of our Oxford students coming from outside Ohio, we’ve been monitoring the situation closely.”

    Those that are on campus are required to wear masks, and as students come back, they can be reported to the Office of Community Standards if they repeatedly refuse to comply with an instructor’s direction to use a mask or face covering.

    Mask requirements are the norm among Ohio’s public colleges and universities, as are 14-day quarantines for students coming from states considered COVID-19 hotspots. 

    Also the norm this school year are phased reopenings, like those at The Ohio State University, Ohio University, Kent State University, Shawnee State University, Cleveland State University, and the University of Cincinnati.

    The first move-in dates for UC, Aug. 14 and 15 were considered “drop-off only,” meaning students could bring their stuff to campus, but then had to return home until the 16th. 

    Another regular part of public colleges’ and universities’ schedules is a return to at least some form of in-person class instruction that ends after Thanksgiving break. The last two weeks, including final exams, will be taken remotely at OSU, Central State University, UC, KSU and Wright State University, among others.

    Kent State and the University of Toledo have eliminated their fall break to allow students to receive a full semester despite adjusted opening dates.

    Toledo said they adjusted their Fall semester “based on the possibility of having a second wave of COVID-19 in late fall,” taking into account CDC data on the pandemic and state recommendations for higher education.

    Bowling Green State University went so far as to cancel their Winter 2021 session and provide a $1,500 credit for the first 2,000 students who cancelled their housing assignment before the school year began this week. 

    “It is important you understand that we are HIGHLY encouraging you not to live on campus this fall,” information on the university’s COVID-19 plan page stated.

    BGSU started their staggered move-in this week for those that had no other option than to take up residence, and are set to begin classes on Aug. 31. Students there will also be online only beginning Nov. 30. 

    OU phased in their reopening by allowing certain graduates and undergraduates “in a carefully selected set of academic programs” to begin their time on campus. Most students will begin remotely on Aug. 24, but students like third-year students in the College of Health Sciences and Professions’ nursing program and juniors and seniors in the Army Reserve Officer Training Corps (ROTC) are eligible to participate in the university’s first phase of schooling. 

    Universities throughout the state sticking with in-person instruction have instituted class-size reductions, along with “hybrid-remote” forms of teaching. Central State spelled out a “cohort attendance” model in its reopening plan, which would break large classes into groups, with the cohorts attending classes on alternating days. This model goes along with a 50% reduction in class sizes, something Wright State anticipates as part of its plan as well.

    “At this time, the university conservatively estimates that one-third of classes will have in-person components while the majority of in-person classes will also deliver all content remotely to provide flexibility to students who are unable or do not feel comfortable returning to campus,” said Wright State president Susan Edwards in a letter to the university community.

    Many of Ohio’s public higher education institutions have also created pledges for students connected to prevention of coronavirus, and in some cases can spur disciplinary action if not signed. 

    Testing and contact tracing for COVID-19 are a regular part of all public school plans, though the ways in which the testing is done vary from school to school. 

    The spring semester plan is still to be determined for most schools. The University of Akron plans to continue hybrid online and in-person instruction into the spring, but others are still watching the success of their fall semesters to plan for the future.

    “Decisions are forthcoming,” stated the UC reopening plan.

    Susan Tebben

    Susan Tebben is an award-winning journalist with a decade of experience covering Ohio news, including courts and crime, Appalachian social issues, government, education, diversity and culture. She has worked for The Newark Advocate, The Glasgow Daily Times, The Athens Messenger, and WOUB Public Media. She has also had work featured on National Public Radio.
  • [VIDEO] LHS grad Hakim Oliver keynotes BLM March in Mason

    [VIDEO] LHS grad Hakim Oliver keynotes BLM March in Mason

    Mason, Ohio – Hakim Oliver graduated from Loveland High School in 1999. He then graduated from Bowling Green State University and is now an intervention specialist working with Seniors at Mason High School.

    Hakim Oliver is married to Alison Oliver

    On June 20 two Mason Alumni put on the BLM Mason March starting at Pine Hill Lakes Park in Mason going to the municipal building that drew thousands. The protest march with petition signing and speakers was to, “…stand in solidarity with our Black community members in their struggle for justice.” Their goals were to raise funds to support social justice, racial equality, protesters, and other facets of the Black Lives Matter movement.

    After the protest march, Oliver approached leaders at Mason City Hall with the idea of holding community conversations in Mason Community Exposure – Bridging Stories. They accepted and embraced the idea. Oliver said, “This is a collaboration with the City of Mason and I’m looking forward to building relationships.”

    Mason has announced the community conversations by saying:

    Sponsored by the City of Mason and in partnership with Mr. Hakim Oliver this program is intended to facilitate positive intergroup interaction and discussion recognizing individuals are different from others and how we together create a community.

    This four part series includes a panel discussion, public input, engagement and interaction helping increase participants perspective by listening and mentally walking in someone else’s shoes. The program aligns with Mason’s mission for building a culture of wellness in the community by helping elevate morale, respect differences, and give a voice to the community.

    Community Exposure – Bridging Stories! participants meet each Wednesday July 15 through August 5 from 7:00 p.m. to 8:15 p.m. at the Mason Municipal Center located at 6000 Mason Montgomery Road.

    Space is limited. Register Here!

     

    Oliver has since approached Loveland City Hall for their support of similar community forums.

    This video is Oliver’s keynote address:

    Here is a video of the BLM Mason protest posted on YouTube by K Jackson.

     

    BLM Mason Demands for Change

    Today we stand in solidarity with our Black community members in their struggle for justice. On May 25th, 2020 George Floyd was yet another victim of police brutality against the Black community in America. His death following those of Ahmaud Arbery, Breonna Taylor, Nina Pop, and Tony McDade sparked a nationwide demand for racial equality. However, our community has largely stayed silent on such issues despite the international outrage that followed. Times like these are when a community must show its character, and for that reason we have organized a peaceful demonstration to achieve the following:

    Goals for protest:

    Raise funds to support social justice, racial equality, protestors, and other facets of the Black Lives Matter Movement

    Sign petitions to further racial equality and protest safety in America

    Demands:

    1. Demand the establishment of two anonymous tip lines, one for the public to utilize, and another for police officers to release statements of other police officer’s misuse of power to both the police department and a third party group.
    2. Demand the redistribution of Mason Police Department funding towards Police Officer Body Worn Cameras and cultural competency training to make Mason PD a progressive role model
    3. Demand that the City of Mason hold an open meeting designated for People of Color to voice their concerns about safety and racism in our community.