Back in 2008, when the Ohio State University began to rumble that sophomores would be required to live on campus, eight of the largest off-campus landlords commissioned a study to assess what could happen to their rental market.  The study hypothesized if OSU were to pull the trigger it could lead to a “long-term collapse of the area,” and result in a “doomsday scenario.”

The landlords were talking about their own rental properties. And the trigger has indeed been pulled as starting next school year OSU is requiring all sophomores to live on-campus.

What the landlords and others didn’t see coming was that running parallel to the sophomore requirement is seismic change off-campus. Changes initiated over two decades ago by the city and university partnership that is Campus Partners, which redeveloped south campus by turning it into South Campus Gateway.

Columbus lost two prominent local business leaders last year, each embodying one of the three basic principles of environmentalism: Reduce, Reuse, Recycle. Championing the recycling movement, there was Dan Weisenbach, 53-year-old owner and President of Weisenbach Recycled Products. And, not often thought of as an environmentally-friendly business, but clearly advancing the re-use of items in the spirit of “one man’s trash is another’s treasure,” was Gary Chasin, of Uncle Sam’s Pawn Shop.

Dan Weisenbach, Recycling Superhero

Weisenbach pioneered the production of eco-friendly promotional products made of recycled scrap materials. “Everyone knows Dan was a dogged champion of recycling since he was a teen and convinced the family to create Weisenbach Recycled products,” said Chuck Lynd of Simply Living.

The basic story of the poisoning of the children of Flint, Mich., through the water they drink is now pretty well known, but as more details come out, it keeps getting worse. Republican Gov. Rick Snyder, after passing a big tax cut for the rich and corporations on coming into office, had to find cuts to make up for the lost revenue.

In Flint and other cities, he essentially nullified democratic elections, deposed elected mayors and city councils and installed his own agents with virtually dictatorial powers. The “emergency manager” of Flint decided that the city could save money by discontinuing its water supply from Lake Huron and instead drawing it from the toxic Flint River. He then failed to treat the new water with additives needed to keep the city’s old pipes from leaching lead. When people objected to the brown, smelly water filled with particles that was coming out of the taps, the governor’s men reassured them the water was safe. All of Flint’s children were exposed to water with elevated levels of lead.

Forty-eight years ago, a serious insurrection jeopardized the power structure of the national Democratic Party for the first time in memory. Propelled by the movement against the Vietnam War, that grassroots uprising cast a big electoral shadow soon after Senator Eugene McCarthy dared to challenge the incumbent for the Democratic presidential nomination.

When 1968 got underway, the news media were scoffing at McCarthy’s antiwar campaign as quixotic and doomed. But in the nation’s leadoff New Hampshire primary, McCarthy received 42 percent of the vote while President Lyndon B. Johnson couldn’t quite get to 50 percent -- results that were shattering for LBJ. Suddenly emboldened, Senator Robert Kennedy quickly entered the race. Two weeks later, Johnson announced that he wouldn’t seek re-election.