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Ohio University Faculty Voices Concerns Over Sook Center
By: Marisa Oberle
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A $5.5 million athlete-exclusive academic center planned for Peden Stadium is seeing some push-back from Ohio University faculty.
Fundraising efforts for the Perry and Sandy Sook Academic Center, which has been in the works since 2014, raised $5.8 million of the $5.5 million goal in February. The administration, athletes and coaches at Ohio University are excited about the project, but others, including many Ohio faculty members, are voicing concerns about building an academic center reserved exclusively for student-athletes.
“We’re creating a special class, social class, on our campus that treats student athletes better than we treat the students in performing arts, the liberal arts, students in a lot of the other units on campus,” journalism professor Bill Reader said.
If the university isn’t building a special center for other marginalized groups on campus, like students of color, Reader said, then student athletes shouldn’t receive special treatment either.
Others say the center could compromise institutional integrity by encouraging cheating and grade changing.
English professor Sherrie Gradin said she thinks the Sook Center could lead to academic scandals similar to those seen at other institutions.
“We already know there’s multiple histories,” Gradin said. “Why do we want to do this?”
But biology professor Bob Colvin, liaison to the NCAA, disagrees with those concerns.
“OU has a long history of institutional integrity when it comes to athletics,” he said. “We’ve never even had an NCAA major violation in all the years that we have been in Division I – I don’t think anybody here is interested in trying to do anything that’s improper and the building of the academic center is not going to change that.”
Plans for the Sook Center are being finalized. The Sook Center will include a large classroom, computer lab, patio and observation deck, lounge, study rooms, staff offices, learning-specialist offices, tutor rooms and a copy room.