To: Dean Greg Rose, OSU-Marion and OSU President Gordon Gee
From: The OSU Delaware/Marion faculty and staff

This petition is in response to the announcement of the future closing of the OSU
Delaware Center. We the undersigned petition to extend the operation thereof until
a coherent plan is in place which respectfully meets the needs of students who take
classes there and the faculty/staff who work there.

First, we thank Dean Rose for his written apology about the lack of transparency
that unfortunately went hand-in-hand with the decision to close the Delaware
Center without the cooperation and input of any significant numbers of the faculty
and staff who have worked faithfully at the institution for these last 10 years.

This sincere apology from Dean Rose is not taken for granted, and is an important
first step toward regaining the trust and esprit de corps of the employees and
students involved in the educational mission at the Delaware Center.

We write this petition in the hope that close teamwork can again be achieved, and
that any errors on all sides are learned from and then left in the past so as not to
cause any lingering rift or mistrust between any administration, faculty or staff.
We recognize that we’ve maintained a long and positive history in our overall
relationship, and should not succumb to cynicism now. These times
certainly require our full team effort, and we must all pull together in our mission to
educate together. This is our highest goal.

In order to recapture and reinvigorate the integrity and service we believe that
we all see as a high ideal of The Ohio State University, and to provide that we
can best serve the students who have made the Delaware Center such a vibrant,
cohesive educational community, we sincerely offer our input, experience, and
recommendations now, and in the near future, as OSU-Marion transitions to a new
presence in Delaware County. We are particularly worried about those students
who will be affected in the near term by such an abrupt transition.

We, the undersigned faculty and staff at Ohio State Marion and Ohio State Delaware
Center, believe that the decision can and should be modified. We respectfully ask
that action be taken to accomplish the following:

1) As the Delaware Center has shown the ability to draw students at a profit
for the students and community and university, we ask that the current
lease be extended. Our belief is that any decision to close the Delaware
Center must be done openly and with much more consideration of all parties
involved. If the Delaware Center must close, ample time must be given so
students may secure access to an equal quality of education, or be able to
complete the first and second-year courses they had already planned to take
on our campus. This would require a minimum of a two-year extension of
the lease at our current location. This would also allow faculty and staff to
seek alternative employment, as many will take either a disastrous pay cut or
lose their jobs if the Delaware Center closes now.

2) We believe that instead of hurting our burgeoning partnership with
Columbus State, maintaining the Delaware Center for the coming years of
transition will strengthen both the logistics and curriculum toward a more
reasonable and equitable partnership with Columbus State. We request
much more dialogue and planning be put in place to help both students
and faculty/staff understand the mechanisms and best locutions of this
Columbus State partnership. We are of course willing and able to teach
and support classes at this Columbus State location, but believe the system
will be stronger if this transition is done more gradually, and with much
more transparency and information available for students, faculty and staff.
We request that the partnership be a true partnership, with give and take
on both sides. This means we should be in dialogue and discussion with the
Columbus State faculty and staff about how to best use the strengths we both
have, and to understand clearly what challenges await this partnership, and
thus achieve a vision together for how the partnership might work best. We
believe a more thoughtful and productive partnership is best accomplished
by an extension of the Delaware Center lease and a purposeful rhetoric with
Columbus State.

We conclude this petition by asserting our powerful faith, hope, and love for the
mission of our great Ohio State University—that which includes, and should also in
the future include, the Ohio State University-Marion Delaware Center.

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