Thursday, June 19, 2008
By Jon Moffett
Ohio’s young people are its future, the president said.
YOUNGSTOWN — Youngstown swapped places with Columbus for a few hours on Wednesday.
Dozens of people decked out in Ohio State gear swarmed the outside patio area of Cassese’s MVR restaurant on Walnut Street. People were cheering for Ohio State University President E. Gordon Gee.
Wednesday’s event was sponsored by the Mahoning and Trumbull County alumni clubs. It was part of a planned trip for Gee, who is visiting each of the 88 Ohio counties this year.
“I told you that when I came back to Ohio that I would visit every county within my first year,” he said to the crowd.
Gee had stopped in Ashtabula and Geauga counties earlier in the day. “We’re getting close to about a third, I think,” Gee said.
Gee is entering his second stint as the university’s president after a hiatus to be the chancellor of Vanderbilt and the president of Brown University. He was the president of Ohio State from 1990-1997 before leaving for Brown.
Gee said he always had a special place for OSU in his heart.
“First of all, it’s such an enormously important institution to the people of the state. There are 11 million Ohioans that are Buckeyes, whether or not they are a Youngstown State graduate or a Kent State graduate. Everyone has a cherished relationship with their university.
“The second thing is the fact that I think that [Ohio State] university and higher education are so enormously important to the quality of the state. I think that we are the economic, social and cultural future. And it’s such a wonderful time to be part of a great university in which you can be an architect of change.”
Gee made sure to make special notice of the school’s current student body.
“The future of this state is our young people,” he said. “Hopefully they’ll stay here and make Ohio better.”
OSU graduated about 8,000 students this spring, said Gee. There are about 1,000 students from Mahoning and Trumbull counties currently at Ohio Sate.
Gee was born in Vernal, Utah. He graduated from the University of Utah with an honors degree in history. In 1979, Gee was named dean of the West Virginia University Law School. In 1981, he was appointed president of the university. Gee remained in that position at WVU before leaving to accept the same position at the University of Colorado.
“I have been part of a lot of universities, as you well know, but I have never been at a place where the passions run so high for everything about the university. It’s the football team, it’s the basketball team, it’s the debate team, it’s band. I mean, whatever it is, there’s just an enormous passion,” he said. “I tell everyone that Ohio State graduates have an infection that’s called Ohio State.”