Athens County Common Pleas Court Judge L. Alan Goldsberry Thursday assigned Delaware County Prosecutor David Yost to investigate allegations that local Democrats planned to reward Ohio University student volunteers a small bounty for each voter they brought to the polls last Friday.

The assignment came nearly a week after the vice president of the Ohio College Democrats sent an e-mail to student club members urging them to participate in a get-out-the-vote march to the polls for early voting Friday, Oct. 30.

In a special audit of Hocking College just released, the Ohio Auditor of State found that three HC officials – Roxanne DuVivier, Lynette Hull and Myriah Short – each improperly paid herself $9,224 in salaries from a grant fund.

The audit also found, among other problems, that the college had improperly paid $530 worth of miscellaneous travel expenses for then President John Light to travel to his second home in Shelter Island, N.Y., and $72 in personal expense reimbursements for two purchases on a college credit card.

Pressure is mounting on Athens County Democratic Party Chair Susan Gwinn to step down from her seat, in the wake of allegations that she and the county party encouraged a program where Ohio University student Democrats would receive a bounty for bringing “friends” to the polls for early voting last Friday.

The latest shot came Wednesday, when Athens City Law Director Patrick Lang submitted a Reader’s Forum to The Athens NEWS calling on Gwinn to resign.

A bad week for Athens County Democratic Party Chair Susan Gwinn got even worse Wednesday evening when the leader of the state Democratic Party called on her to resign from her seat.

In an e-mailed press release, Ohio Democratic Party Chair Chris Redfern stated, "I was saddened to hear the latest chapter in what has been a long series of questionable actions on the part of Susan Gwinn during her time as Athens County Democratic Party chairwoman. For the good of the party, I ask that she resign from her position effective immediately.”

Now that Democrat Christine Fahl looks to be heading back to Athens City Council to represent the Fourth Ward for two more years, she says she’ll continue working with the city planner to update city laws as they apply to development.

“Immediately, we have to look at the budget; that’s what we’re doing right now,” Fahl said Wednesday morning. “But a longer-term project is going to be updating the code to make it much more proactive and understandable by both developers and citizens of the city.”

The trial of a former Ohio University student charged with raping a female student in her dorm room will go longer than expected, with closing arguments possibly not coming until Friday.

Defense attorney K. Robert Toy, who represents 21-year-old Matthew Kulchar, said Wednesday that the lawyers in the case “seriously underestimated” how long the trial would take.

Ohio University’s departing top financial officer said Monday he was pleasantly surprised when the prestigious Rhode Island School of Design approached him with a job offer, to become the school’s new executive vice president.

“It wasn’t on my radar screen,” said Bill Decatur, who is stepping down as OU’s senior vice president for finance and administration to take the job at RISD in Providence. “But as I looked into it, I quite frankly became intrigued, and excited.”

Ohio University is not the only school in the state that has experienced significant enrollment growth this year. Statewide, enrollment grew by 9.3 percent, according to a study released Wednesday by the Ohio Board of Regents.

This 9.3 percent growth is three times the growth the state saw in 2008-2009.

After an Athens County grand jury handed down a six-count indictment alleging campaign shenanigans against county Democratic Party chair Susan Gwinn this fall, I wrote a column saying she should step aside, at least temporarily.

Not long after, I wrote another column slamming Democratic central committee members and officeholders for standing by their compromised party leader.

To the Editor:

Many in the community mental-health system were hopeful about our new administration in Ohio, watching a governor with a background in psychology and the penal system. Now, however, the hopefulness having moved to cautiousness is pretty near complete exhaustion. Understand this sentiment comes with all due respect to being handed a huge deficit on top of the multitudinous challenges of the past couple years.