Displaying items by tag: town hall meeting

University of Akron President Dr. Scott Scarborough took center stage at a town hall meeting-style discussion on campus Monday.

Nearly one hundred students showed up to the Student Union to ask the president anonymous questions by sending text messages which displayed on a monitor.

Scarborough touched on about 25 topics during the two hour meeting. One of the most popular issues was the cuts made at E.J Thomas Hall.

"When we looked at the economic performance of E.J. Thomas it was losing in any year anywhere between one-point-two and two millions dollars," said Scarborough. "And given the financial challenges that we had overall we need to find a way to continue with E.J. Thomas, but not lose that much per year."

Many students were also looking for answers about the elimination of the varsity baseball program.

"Our commitment to intercollegiate athletics is very strong, but the question is always going to be 'what is the appropriate level of investment ?', said Scarborough. "We are an academic institution first and foremost , so we're always going to make those decisions that we believe are going to keep this university stronger."

Something that will not be dismissed anytime soon, according to Scarborough, is the name of the university. He addressed that once again as well.

"The name of the university does not change, so the degree will continue to say 'The University of Akron'," said Scarborough. "What we're trying to do is to take the University of Akron's great name and all of the equity and strength that it has and make it even stronger."

And don't worry, Zippy isn't going anywhere either.

"I've never heard of one person that wants to get rid of Zippy, not one," said Scarborough. "And I've heard many different ideas, so I think that suggests that Zippy is beloved. In fact, she is on our list of university strengths ."

Senior PR major Sofia Syned was one of the students in attendance . She says she wasn't very satisfied with how Scarborough answered the questions.

"I believe he did not answer those questions," she said. "I feel like they were scripted and a lot of people's questions weren't answered that were texted in."

Fellow student Israa Eddeb agrees and thinks the school is being run more like a business and less like...a school.

"I feel like what the university is currently doing is trying to market the school as opposed to helping the students ", she said. "I feel like the student are less priority, the current students especially. They're looking just towards the future students. So I really want to know how are they going to help us now and not the future students coming up?"

Undergraduate Student Government Chief of Staff Megan Bodenchatz, who helped put on the event, says even though there may still be some concerns, she was satisfied with Scarborough's answers.

"I think that there still is a little bit of murky water, but overall I think that he did a really great job of trying to communicate with the students what's going on in the university and what the future of the university holds." she said.

Other topics that were addressed included campus safety, a possible k-12 laboratory school, the impact of LeBron James' partnership, the reduced cost of gen-ed courses, and the infamous olive jar.