Ohio universities often issue students proof of residency letters to help them vote. Many of these students are from out of state or another county.
The provision would make students who receive these letters eligible for in-state tuition, which could cost Ohio colleges millions of dollars.

The measure’s proponents say it would give students better tuition rates.

But OSU senior Kenneth Meyers, of Kansas, said that is the wrong way to go about reducing tuition. And Kenneth said he fears universities will stop providing the documentation.

“If they find out they can’t vote here in Ohio then maybe they’ll miss the deadline and they can’t vote in their home state. So, this should be something we celebrate and make easily accessible,” Meyers said.

OSU junior Michael Flannagan, of Maryland, said the provision is a blatant attempt to stifle the college vote.

“We are subject to the same laws in Ohio. We are subject to the same taxes, to the same sales taxes, we are subject to the same rules of Ohio. Try to use money as an excuse to take away our right to vote is wrong.”

Ohio State said it continues to analyze the measure. University spokeswoman Gayle Saunders said “the financial impact to OSU would be of concern to us.”

Last fall, nearly 1,200 out-of-state freshmen were enrolled at OSU.

The university says the trend reflects recruiting efforts developed as the number of high school graduates in Ohio is dropping.

Ohio State, one of the country’s biggest universities, has added recruiters in the past couple of years in Atlanta, Dallas, Los Angeles and New York City.

The university is also recruiting new students overseas, with an emphasis on China, India and more recently Brazil.

Dolan Evanovich, Ohio State’s vice president for strategic enrollment planning, tells The Associated Press the goal is to create a “brain gain” for the university and the state.

Of Ohio State’s 35,000 applications for the upcoming school year, 56 percent are from out of state.

The donation being presented in a ceremony Friday at the Moritz College of Law in Columbus comes from a student who wants to honor her husband, who was killed in action in Iraq.

Army Capt. Jenna Grassbaugh is making the donation to create the Capt. Jonathan D. Grassbaugh Veterans Project. It will provide legal assistance to veterans on issues such as foreclosure and debt.

Jenna Grassbaugh is a student at the law school.

Her husband was killed by a roadside bomb on April 7, 2007. She later served a tour in Iraq.

The law school is trying to raise money to match Grassbaugh’s donation.

OSU officials began studying changes to vehicular and pedestrian traffic last fall after a number of accidents occurred. After months of study, both short-range and long-term goals were established. One of those goals will be implemented April 17. It will turn the Oval into what’s being called a Walk Zone.

Lindsay Komlanc, a spokeswoman for the university’s Office of Administration and Planning, says the study helped identify how different modes of transportation interacted with one another.

“One of the ways we wanted to start to stress the need for us to separate the different forms of transportation was by establishing a walk zone on the oval to help show which types of transportation were most suitable for different areas,” Komlanc says.

Komlanc says there will be a culture shift taking place on campus that will begin with The Oval.

“We understand that this is a very large change and when you’re talking about the start of a culture shift we want to make sure that we spend a lot of time educating the university community about what it is and what it means,” Komlanc says.

One student who would not give his name described the culture shift this way:

“I think it’s bulls**t,”

But Komlanc says bicycles should not be ridden on sidewalks.

“A bicycle is a vehicle and a bicycle belongs in the road. For those areas where bicycles don’t want to be in the road or feel that it would be better not to be mixing with motor vehicles that’s perfectly fine, but it does mean that they need to interact with pedestrians and so we need to think about dismounting and walking bicycles,” Komlanc says.

“I think that’s kind of horrible. I don’t really like that that much,” says Josh Gonzales, another student.
Gonzales also thinks that banning bicycle-riding on The Oval is a bad idea.

“It’s a very large hub; to go from north to south or to go from east to west. Pretty much if you’re on campus you’re going to be on The Oval,” says Gonzales.

On the afternoon of April 17th volunteers will be out on the Oval educating students, faculty and staff about the new Walk Zone designation. The University will begin fining violators next fall.

No. 2 Ohio State (28-7) needed Craft’s only 3-pointer of the game – an arching shot over 6-foot-7 defender Georges Niang from the top of the key – to avoid yet another upset in the West. Four of the top five seeds have fallen fast and hard in that most-busted bracket.

The Buckeyes’ 10th straight win sends them into the round of 16 for the fourth straight year, a school record. They’ll play sixth-seeded Arizona on Thursday in Los Angeles.

Tenth-seeded Iowa State (23-12) overcame a late 13-point deficit by hitting 3s – the Cyclones’ specialty – but wound up beaten by Craft’s lone basket from behind the arc.

At Ohio State University, the Technology and Commercialization Office helps students and faculty turn their idea into reality. This year, the TCO expects to double the number of start-up businesses fostered by the office. WOSU’s reports on a couple of OSU innovators whose ideas are well on their way to success.

Innovation often precedes a problem or an inconvenience. For Ohio State senior Austin Miller using his personal text messaging plan for a class inspired an idea.

Miller’s statistics professor required class participation via text message.

There’s technology out there that would allow instructors to get instant class responses, like a text message, but the student would have to purchase a special gadget. And Ohio State has to buy receivers to enable the equipment. It’s kind of complicated. Miller thought there had to be an easier, cheaper solution.

“There’s all this WiFi. Why are we bothering using up texting plans and things like that? So that’s the genesis of the idea.”

Miller “googled” his way through writing code for an application – often called an “app” – that would allow students and teachers to instantly communicate using existing WiFi and cellular networks. Like many people with a good idea, Miller wasn’t sure what to do next.

The Technology and Commercialization Office heard about Miller’s idea and contacted him.

“I was just slightly above conceptual, I think. My background is in graphic design, so I pretty much faked it like I had done a lot more than I really had,” he laughed.

TCO connected Miller with software developers, new venture experts and potential investors. His concept quickly took shape.

Miller’s company, by the way, is called Emeritus. His software app is expected to be tested in several Ohio State classrooms this summer.

“The process is on-going, but every day it gets a little bigger,” Miller said. “You know, now I’m just sitting here talking about it; thinking back, like, oh yeah, wow, I came in here with an idea. And just through TCO it’s becoming a reality. It’s exciting.”

Paul Reeder sees that kind of excitement every day. He directs TCO’s Ideation Lab where concepts are cultivated. Entreprenuers, Reeder said, are driven, but when they have guidance…

“They’re able to actually launch this thing in a much shorter period of time just because we’re really going to be able to help all the way along.”

Speaking of time, a company called inmobly hopes to help speed up mobile streaming. This start-up is a faculty product of Ohio State’s TCO.

Liza Reed speaks for and directs product development for inmobly, created by OSU engineering professor Hesham El Gamal.

“Anyone’s who’d had a smartphone has definitely had the experience where you’re streaming music or you’re streaming a video and you get that white [buffering] wheel, and [the device] just slows down,” Reed said. “And sometimes it’s like at terrible times: the peak of the song, or soccer a highlight, or the goal or whatever. And it’s very frustrating and it’s incredibly unnecessary.”

inmobly’s technology is supposed to do two things: help with mobile streaming and reduce the Internet bandwidth crunch.

The application called PAUL, which stands for Predictive Automated User-Centric Loading, identifies music and videos people like and downloads new content to their mobile device BEFORE the user tries to stream it from the Internet.

“Right now, your apps require this Internet connection. But with something like the PAUL technology you don’t need that anymore,” she said. “The technology takes advantage of the Internet connection when it has it and the user isn’t handcuffed to needing a 4G connection, for example, to consume their content.”

Theoretically, the PAUL app would download content during off-peak Internet hours, so bandwidth space would free up during PEAK hours since PAUL app users would be off-line.

PAUL app only works with ESPN, YouTube, CNN, Facebook, Twitter and a free music site for now. But Reed said there is room to expand to other audio and video content providers.

It’s this kind of success that energizes Brian Cummings. Cummings became TCO’s vice president in 2011. Since then, the number of start-ups has nearly tripled. This year, the office expects about 12 new businesses from Ohio State students and faculty.

“It’s really a big undertaking in that everything that we try to do we look at: what’s the value of that? What are the outcomes we’re trying to achieve? What’s the public good? And how do we build the right eco-system to bring the right people together to take those great ideas and turn them into something that’s very impactful.”

While TCO helps get innovations off the ground, its work benefits Ohio State’s coffers. The university has some rights revenue generated by companies, like inmobly. In 2012, OSU received nearly $2.8 million in total revenue from start-ups, a 42 percent increase over the previous year.

Because Emeritus’ Austin Miller is an undergrad, he, not OSU, owns his company’s intellectual property. But Miller says he’ll broker a revenue deal with the university.

“There’s not a question, if this works or if it’s the next thing or whatever it may be, I will be coming back here with money to invest in [TCO],” he said. “I think it’s worth it for anybody who just has an idea and doesn’t know what to do with it. This is the place to help them get from point A to point B.”

Non-OSU dreamers can pitch ideas the second Friday of each month in an open community TCO session called WakeUp StartUp.

The coach known for his no-frills approach and conservative game plan brought four national championships to Ohio State.

But those who knew him best say he was much more complicated than that. Hayes was fired in disgrace for punching an opposing player at the 1978 Gator Bowl, but was beloved by OSU fans until his death in 1987. He even spoke at an OSU commencement ceremony in 1986.

For a better look at the coach’s legacy, WOSU’s Steve Brown spoke with Jeff Kaplan, an OSU vice president who was a graduate assistant under Hayes. Click the play button above to hear their conversation.

In an effort to help students pay for college, Ohio State has set out to raise $500 million for scholarships.

University President E. Gordon Gee has appealed for help from its head football and basketball coaches, Urban Meyer and Thad Matta, to help raise $100 million for Ohio students.

“Both of them are great spokesmen for the university and they carry a great responsibility to make the case,” Gee said.

Coach Meyer welcomes the task.
“When president Gee and my athletic director came back to see me and said we’d like you to take part, I found out what it was for and absolutely I was all in.”

And Meyer noted to university trustees how the cost of college and the job market have changed drastically during the last 25 years.

“When I saw that the intent was to have a young person graduate from Ohio State debt-free and have a fighting chance,” Meyer said. “Because, like I said, back in the day you graduated with a degree, the percentages were in your favor to get a place of employment. That’s much different than what is was back in the ‘80s.”

Students are racking up more student debt than ever before. By some estimates, student loan debt in the U.S. totals $1 trillion. And Gee acknowledged there’s a great need to help reduce it.

“If I were in an ideal world, obviously I would love to have no student debt. But clearly we want to make certain that student debt is very low,” Gee said. “At the same time we want to maintain and increase the quality of the institution, so that’s the reason we’re so focused on this.”

Gee said there’s no timetable to raise the scholarship money, but he says once the $100 million is raised it will be dispersed for scholarships in each of Ohio’s 88 counties.

It’s been more than a decade since fewer than 100,000 people crammed into Ohio Stadium to cheer on the Buckeyes for a home game. Now the university is trying to capitalize: the Board of Trustees on Friday voted to increase football ticket prices from $70 to $79, and to introduce premium ticket pricing.

Premium ticket pricing is charging a different ticket price depending on the game.

Charlie Wilson is a law professor at OSU who chairs the university’s Athletic Council. It recently voted to put the proposal before the board of trustees.

It lets the university designate two “premium” games a year with tickets as much as $150. If the university opts for just one premium game a year, prices could go up to $175 a ticket.

It’s a first for OSU, but Wilson says as far as he knows, OSU is the only major college football program without premium pricing. It’s common in basketball, too.

“This last year, Ohio State played at the University of Kansas. There, their cheapest tickets were going for $80…this is for basketball. Whereas when Kansas came to play Ohio State this year, the ticket prices were the same regardless. The University of Kansas game was no-more expensive,” Wilson says.

Wilson declined to endorse or criticize the proposal, only saying a lack of premium pricing leaves a lot of money on the table.

“Big-time college sports have been highly commercialized, and now it’s simply out of control in terms of commercialism,” says Allen Sack, a professor of Sports Management at the University of New Haven and a defensive end on the 1966 Notre Dame national championship team.

He’s also a founding member of the Drake Group, an association of college faculty that, according to its mission statement, “defends academic integrity in higher education from the corrosive aspects of commercialized college sports.”

What has happened is as you become more commercialized, the pressure of winning is so intense on the coaches that it’s pushed down onto the athletes, the athletes have greater pressure, you have more cheating, you have more phantom courses, you have more paper courses where you don’t even show up and you supposedly write a paper and you get A’s.

No Ohio State trustees responded to requests for comment on this story.

Judging by internet message boards and the comments on news stories, most OSU fans seem to be against the price hike.

Walking to class, OSU student Kevin Speroff says any increase in ticket prices is unfortunate. But he’s hopeful higher prices for the general public might mean less public demand and more tickets for students, who would not be subject to premium pricing.

“You know a lot of schools have really, really cheap tickets for the students, and we can’t really afford expensive football games and stuff, but we want to get out there and see all that.”

Speroff says the price hike could also push him to scalp his tickets if demand increases enough. Even with premium pricing, prices at the ticket window won’t even begin to approach what scalpers can sometimes fetch on the open market. Tickets for the OSU-Michigan game can reach into the thousands of dollars.

OSU says Heisman Trophy winner Eddie George will become an assistant vice president for business advancement and work on health and wellness initiatives, as well as support the efforts to engage alumni and friends in the life of the university, assist with fundraising, alumni relations, and communications for Ohio State, and work with student-athletes as determined by the athletics director.

George starred at Ohio State, where he won the Heisman Trophy as college football’s best player in 1995. He went on to play nine years in the NFL and appeared in Super Bowl XXXIV in 2000. He also owns a steakhouse near the OSU campus and has worked a football commentator for several television networks.

OSU says George’s initial salary will be $220,000 a year.