A student government committee is exploring the possibility of buying the sidewalk in front of the Campus Center in order to curb protests.
The student experience and campus climate subcommittee discussed the purchase of the sidewalk, in addition to the sidewalk in front of Towers Hall, from the City of Westerville at its Oct. 26 meeting. The Campus Center sidewalk has been used twice this year by anti-abortion group “Created Equal” to stage protests including images of aborted tissue on public property, where speech is currently regulated by a public instead of a private entity.
Each time the group protested at campus, students raised counter-protests against them. Bob Gatti, vice president of student affairs, praised the counter protesters at an Oct. 22 address to student government.
According to the student assembly bylaws, the purpose of the student experience and campus climate committee is, “to oversee the student experience, serving as an advocate for student concerns and working to address campus climate.” The committee is made up of eight student senators, one faculty senator, one administrative senator and one representative of student affairs.
At the meeting, Jude Burnside, student chair of the committee, opened the meeting up to proposals for the student life grant.
Elise Woods, a student senator on the committee, said: “for the abortion protests, I just noticed that when those specific people, that group, is on campus, it makes the campus climate...people get very unhappy. I live in Mayne and it’s right there and like, Mayne people are like, like it’s in our space, yeah.”
Woods asked the committee if it was possible for Otterbein to buy the sidewalks from Westerville. Committee members expressed general agreement with the proposal.
Suzanne Ashworth, the faculty senator for the committee, and student senator Josh Plichta stated that they expect the protesters to move to a different sidewalk if the campus center sidewalk is purchased by Otterbein.
“I think it’s worth looking into, even if all we could get is the sidewalk in front of the campus center,” Burnside said in the meeting.
Other senators agreed that they would attempt to buy the sidewalk in front of Towers as well. Senator Burnside adjourned the meeting after stating that she would work on a student life grant proposal to purchase the sidewalks.
Student government President Carrie Coisman and Parliamentarian Cara Hardy, who did not attend the meeting, stated that they were in favor of the proposal.
“It wouldn’t, like Cara was saying, it wouldn’t censor Created Equal, they would just have to ask permission to come, which would give us more heads up, which again is not anything to do with politics, more just protecting the campus environment because, on both sides of the equation, it tends to get heated, it got apparently a little rowdy last time,” Coisman said. “I think if everybody had more, just, advanced notice, people could take better care of themselves, people that have political opinions could better and more eloquently prepare, so on and so forth.”
Conner Dunn, vice president of student government, said he could see where the committee was coming from with the proposal, but he said he had a concern about the proposal's effect.
“Buying up the sidewalks is an alright idea. Unless we buy all of Otterbein’s sidewalks, it wouldn’t stop much, they would just go to a different part of campus,” Dunn said.
On Oct. 14, an OPD officer approached a protester from a non-denominational church and advised him to step off of campus center property and onto the sidewalk.
Editor's Note: A previous version of this article described Created Equal as a pro-abortion group.
