Project helps solve state’s key issues

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By Keyla Snowden

Students will have the chance to talk politics with potential future representatives of the state.

The eighth-annual Citizen Kentucky public forum, held in conjunction with UK’s Discovery Seminar Program class, the Commonwealth’s political leaders, journalists, students and faculty to discuss Kentucky’s most pressing problems and proposed solution.

This forum, at 11 a.m. on Wednesday in the Great Hall of the Margaret I. King Building, will also feature the nine candidates who are running to replace U.S. Sen. Jim Bunning (R-Ky.).

The attending candidates are Republicans Trey Grayson, Bill Johnson, Brian D. Oerther, Rand Paul and Roger Thoney; and Democrats Jack Conway, Daniel Mongiardo, Darlene Fitzgerald Prince and Maurice Sweeny. UK Provost Kumble Subbaswamy will make opening remarks.

“People need to practice being good citizens to build and flex their civic muscles,” said Buck Ryan, journalism professor and director of the Citizen Kentucky Project of the Scripps Howard First Amendment Center.

Bunning announced in the summer he would not be seeking a third term in 2010 because of lack of funds to run his campaign.

Students can learn about politics by engaging in discussion and hear first-hand from the nine candidates running for the U.S. Senate race, Ryan said.

“Students need to learn that if they don’t do politics, then politics will do them,” Ryan said.