Ohio University Student President Has Students 'Up in Arms' After Filling Bucket With 'Blood' During Ice Bucket Challenge and Excoriating Israel

Ohio University is distancing itself this week from its student body president after she accepted the Ice Bucket Challenge and turned it into a grotesque display to bash Israel. And even the student government has apologized.

Megan Marzec, a senior at OU, originally accepted the challenge from university President Roderick McDavis on Tuesday. But instead of keeping with the spirit of the challenge, she used it to pour a bucket of "blood" on herself and demand the college "divest" from Israel.

"I'm sending a message of student concern of the genocide in Gaza and the occupation of Palestine by the Israeli state,” Marzec says in the video, which has since been set to private but obtained by Campus Reform. “I'm urging you, and OU, to divest and cut all ties with academic and other Israeli businesses and institutions. This bucket of blood symbolizes the thousands of displaced and murdered Palestinians, atrocities which OU is directly complacent in through cultural and economic support of the Israeli state."

Campus Reform reported the bucket was likely filled with tomato juice and red paint instead of actual blood.

Either way, the student government has condemned the video:

President McDavis and the university also released a statement criticizing the move:

Several weeks ago, I challenged the Ohio University Student Senate President in the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge to raise awareness for Lou Gehrig’s Disease. She responded on September 2^nd with a video urging the University divest itself from any interest in Israel. Ohio University responded yesterday with the following statement:

The role and value of a higher education institution is to foster civil discussions about important and complex issues. To be sure, the Student Senate president in her video altered the original spirit with which President Roderick J. McDavis issued the ALS Ice Bucket Challenge. Her actions do not reflect the position of Ohio University or President McDavis. We recognize the rights of individual students to speak out on matters of public concern and we will continue to do so, but want to be clear that the message shared today by her is not an institutional position or a belief held by President McDavis.

Dylan Gustafson, an OU student, told Campus Reform that the student body is "up in arms" over the video and he thinks it will end in Marzec losing her position.

"I believe the outrage will continue until she resigns from her post or she is forced out because she does not embody the values and beliefs of the majority of the Ohio University students," he told the outlet.