Column by Austin Schmitt
Big government has come to the city of Lexington and it doesn’t end with the Lexington-Fayette Urban County Government.
The recently publicized new student housing plan presented by LFUCG, and a group within, titled the Student Housing Task Force has come under scrutiny. The plan would prevent off-campus neighborhoods to house students living right next to each other, effectively pushing students farther and farther away from campus.
A student gathering on Sept. 22 that started at UK and marched to City Hall to argue the plan is a beginning, but UK students may want to retrace their steps.
LFUCG is not the only ones stirring the pot, but members of UK’s community are in on the deal as well. Five members of UK’s community, Lisa Higgins-Hord, UK assistant vice president for university engagement, Tony Blanton, UK assistant dean of students, Joe Monroe, UK interim chief of police, Tyler Montell, former UK Student Government president and Nick Stamatiadis, a UK engineering professor, are part of this task force, according to the Student Housing Task Force report.
Think the city of Lexington could get away with a ludicrous plan like this and not include UK? Take another look, students. It’s not just Lexington that wants to take away your rights to live in an off-campus residence, it is the very people within your campus community.
This is a hard sell for me. According to the report, 76 percent of UK students live off campus. With some simple math, that leaves 24 percent of UK students living on campus, which is approximately one quarter of the total undergraduate population. One quarter of 18,000 undergraduate students is about 4,500 students. UK Housing can only house around 5,100 students on campus, according to its Web site.
So where do the rest of these students live? The obvious answer is close to campus in an off-campus residence. When students are progressively pushed off campus, they look to find a residence relatively close to campus, maybe even within walking distance of their classes. Get ready for this mind-blowing revelation; students may live in groups of homes called neighborhoods “neighboring†UK so they can get to class in an efficient manner.
Well, this seemingly obvious concept is getting blown to bits by the proposed new student housing regulations. Not only is this plan inconceivable, it is not fair. This plan asks students to move farther away from campus, effectively eliminating the easy walk to class and giving UK more problems.
Oh wait, alternative ways to get to campus are available, right? One could easily begin to ride their bike to campus. No, that wouldn’t work because there’s this new procedure about registering bikes and being able to park and chain the bikes only in certain places. Throw that idea out the window.
Drive your car to campus? That’s the biggest joke of them all. Every student knows driving on and around campus gives the driver more of a headache than cramming the night before a final exam. Also, students surely wouldn’t want to contribute to Lexington’s carbon footprint — already the highest in the nation — by adding more vehicles on the road during high-traffic periods.
How about LexTran or the UK bus system? It’s a possibility, but LexTran’s schedules are not flexible for students on the move.
They are also part of LFUCG. Does anyone detect the scent of a conspiracy?
So now that there are no efficient ways to get to class, what are students to do?
This is only one of the problems with this plan. It’s hard to believe that members of the UK community on this task force would stand for a plan like this.
Did they have the best intentions of the students in mind when they contributed to these meetings?
Under the plan, any student that wants to move into an off-campus home must apply for a permit and pay a “small annual fee†to LFUCG that would pay the cost of periodic inspections every two to three years. More money for students to pay, leaving them deeper in debt when they leave school. With tuition rising every year and more fees added every year, isn’t this a little over the top?
The problem will only get worse under these new guidelines. With UK calling to increase undergraduate enrollment to 25,000 by the year 2020 under the glorious top-20 plan, student housing will only become harder to come by and UK isn’t doing much to help. Also included in the report, it stated that UK only plans to increase the on-campus housing by 1,500 beds in this same period of time. Another quick calculation will show that if this enrollment increase occurs (which I wouldn’t bet on), then 4,500 more students will have to find an off-campus residence.
The numbers don’t add up and neither does the sense. If you can make a list of families that want to raise their kids between two houses of students, I would love to see it. Vacant homes will surround this campus and landlords will have to force higher rent to students because they won’t be able to fill their properties.
In tough economic times, this is unreasonable. When will the city of Lexington and UK recognize the reason this community thrives — UK students — and do something that actually benefits them?
Austin Schmitt is a finance sophomore. E-mail aschmitt@kykernel.com.
I don’t agree with the proposed housing plan, but the following statement you made is just plain wrong.
“One could easily begin to ride their bike to campus. No, that wouldn’t work because there’s this new procedure about registering bikes and being able to park and chain the bikes only in certain places. Throw that idea out the window.”
Registering a bike isn’t difficult (I did it online from home) as seemingly hundreds of cyclists make it to campus each day (myself included). And as for chaining up bikes only in “certain places” — you mean bike racks? That’s pretty much a normal procedure.
George Orwell would love this scenario, you may as well call the LFUCG an extension of Big Brother with their proposed controls over all aspects of student life. If anything, students contribute to the economic prosperity and survival of this town, why discourage our presence?
If the students and landlords around campus behaved as responsible neighbors then homeowners in the area and the greater UK community would have little passion for this issue and no need to propose regulations.
The creation of mini-apartment complexes on single-family platted lots – and city approval of this development – is irresponsible because it creates a density of population that was never intended in the neighborhoods around campus and that cannot be supported long-term by the infrastructure currently in place.
The inability of students to respect their neighbors by observing parking regulations, by properly disposing of garbage, by driving in a safe and legal manner, and by restricting noise to reasonable hours during the week is largely to blame for the proposals. Maybe if student-renters were proactive and contributed to these great neighborhoods around campus, instead of treating them like their personal playgrounds for someone else to care for, families that invest in and live in these homes would work with you instead of against you.
Act like responsible landowners, renters, and neighbors and you will be treated with respect and welcomed into these neighborhoods.
Pete’s point of view is what’s wrong with Lexington and what’s wrong with this proposal. Treating the “great” neighborhoods of lexington like a personal playground…Are you kidding me? It is absurd that you and others of the community blame these problems all on the students. Non-Students must be perfect law abiding citizens, who never cause any problems in the community. The sexual assault on Crescent Ave. proves that right? Honestly Pete, if you don’t like living around campus then you can move for all I care. You have to give respect to get it.
At Pete:
Not all students are crazy, rebellious, sex-crazed party animals like you seem to think. The term “student” is so ambiguous that it is unfair to categorize and point fingers at the entire group. Some students are fifty years old, some are twenty years old. Some students are rich momma’s boys/girls, some students work their asses off trying to pay for the apartment LFUCG wants to kick them out of.
Excluding an entire group of people because of the shortcomings of a few members of that population is WRONG. LFUCG should focus on punishing the people breaking these laws/ordinances, whether they be students or not. Students aren’t the problem. The problem is enforcement.
PETE SAYS: “Act like responsible landowners, renters, and neighbors and you will be treated with respect and welcomed into these neighborhoods.”
Pete as long as students pay their rent and landlords pay their taxes, that is as far as responsibility goes. This place we all abide in is said to have both freedom and liberty, two entirely different concepts. All that is taking place now is pure tyranny. If there exists any negative externalized impacts upon the ‘Neighborhoods’ the POLICE and CODE ENFORCEMENT are well armed to take care of the situation.
Legislation has yet to remove crime from the streets. You will always have criminals. You will always have students. Why pass more ordinances to punish students for just being students? Students and landlords are not the scum of the earth as the LFUCG and the BS Herald-Leader would have you to believe to be truth. What the Urban Council is attempting to do is to displace landlords and students from around campus so that the University of Kentucky can continue its ungodly urban sprawl. It is time for THE GOVERNOR to set aside funds to build two (that is 2) additional student housing towers that can house the 76% of students forced to live off campus.
It is time for students and parents and landlords to go on strike against the University of Kentucky and make the University of Kentucky Administration ‘ Act Responsible’.
If you are not a student, why would you live in a neighborhood that you know is dominately students? Never made sense to me.
Here’s my opinion. Not all college students are bad apples, believe it or not some actually do come home and study. And yes, some of us actually refrain from partying. It’s a tough concept to comprehend, I realize, but it is the truth. The fact of the matter though is that many students do choose to have gatherings at their houses. That is not going to change even if we are forced to move further away from campus. What will happen, if this asinine bill gets passed, is that the problem will be transplanted to other areas of Lexington, which are ( judging by common sense and deductive reasoning) more heavily populated by “older” Lexingtonians, who will continue to whine, cry, and bother the police every Friday night. It only makes sense for students to live close to campus, in walking or biking distance, especially given the “Green” initiatives being brought forth by The University of Kentucky and The City of Lexington.
The council failed on this issue once before and hopefully, by the grace of common sense, they will fail again. If anyone should be forced to leave these neighborhoods, it is those who brought this issue forward. I have no problem with families living in college neighborhoods, it creates diversity, but when you sign on that dotted line you should know the risks (i.e. loud music, parties, blue and red strobe lights flashing in your window at night, etc.).
I’ll end with a suggestion. An agreement between registered property owners and the police, in which tenants are evicted on a zero tolerance basis IF their neighbors so choose to call the police and involve them. Throw out the bad apples but please don’t cut down the tree.
When is there going to be a “March on the Administration Building” to demand a wet campus? UK has dumped their student housing and party problems on the surrounding neighborhoods and people in the surrounding neighborhoods are just trying to protect themselves from the consequences. So why don’t you march on the ones doing the victimizing and harm, rather than the ones suffering because of UKs bad policies. Wouldn’t that make more sense?
This article has good arguments but leads with the partisan batining “big government has come to the city of lexington”. Why is it that the majority of all editorials and opinions in the kernel come from conservatives who make it a point to announce they are conservative with right-wing talk radio buzzwords and pointless political invective?
Yes this is a red state with a red state “culture” but Lexington is a blue city (like every other big city in America). So why isn’t there fair representation of opinions from the blue side?
You, dear Austin, are the one missing the point.
There are actually nine different alternative “plans” being considered by the Planning Committee (not yet at City Council) to address UK student housing issues. Each one is different.
The Student Housing Task Force report is 29 pages long with 160 pages of appendices. Have you read it? Or are you just jumping on a moving bandwagon?
There’s nothing worse or more dangerous than an ingnorant misinformant.
Charlie,
We live in these neighborhoods, because they were not “student party neighborhoods” 25 years ago! I was here before you were born and I will be here when you finish at UK or leave UK. You are very closed minded and ill informed to ask such a stupid question. Get to know the long term residents of these neighborhoods and then you will have your answer. And if we move, you will be living in a cesspool, because your landlords only want your money and if UK cared about you, they would provide you with adequate parking and bike rakes and . . .! Think before putting your fingers to the keyboard next time and really hope that the writer of this editorial is never in charge of anything because he can’t read or understand what he has read.
Enrollment at UK is going to drop if the university and the city of Lexington continue to target students and make life hard for us. You can’t have a dry campus AND send university cops into OFF CAMPUS neighborhoods to bust parties- pick one to keep dry and leave the other alone
We are college students, we’re going to party, leave us alone or your source of income is going to dry up sooner than you realize it.
“When will the city of Lexington and UK recognize the reason this community thrives — UK students — and do something that actually benefits them?”
I’m glad someone else feels this way besides me