UK officials must serve their constituents
November 4, 2009 by Opinions · 2 Comments
Column by Justin Lamb
Last Tuesday, the Board of Trustees voted against the interests of some students, faculty and staff when they chose to name the new Wildcat Lodge, the Wildcat Coal Lodge. However, this should not come as that big of a surprise to us anymore.
The board seems to have a clause in their bylaws requiring them not to work in the interest of the students or the university’s employees. They have been dragged, kicking and screaming, to every bit of progress this university has had in recent memory.
Remember the green fee? It took years before the board, in their infinite wisdom, decided to placate the student body with a meager, and as of yet meaningless, fee.
I could go into more examples of the board’s ineptitude but I simply don’t have the time or, more importantly, the space to adequately describe them all.
The most recent transgression by the board leads me to a question I’ve asked myself a dozen times since coming to UK: why is the board and the administration so fervently anti-student?
It’s not that I expect to agree with the board in every decision they make, but I do expect them to look out for, and take interest in, the students as well as the faculty and the staff. I don’t think that’s too tall an order, but I would apparently be wrong.
To use the example of the Coal Lodge, it’s not so much they voted to name it after coal and the coal industry, but more the board couldn’t care less about the opinion of the students or the rules and regulations of the university.
Ernie Yanarella, one of the faculty representatives on the board, suggested the board seek legal council on whether or not naming the building “Wildcat Coal Lodge†met the requirements UK set out for itself for the naming of a university building.
It was, of course, shot down. I say “of course†because seeking legal council when there is a legal question is a logical move and ultimately in the best interest of the university. I suspect it is for that reason the board chose not to do it.
This is very telling of how the board and the administration feel about UK. It is their own little, multi-million dollar playground, where they may do as they please without the tiniest amount of consideration for anyone or anything else, be it the students or the rules that govern the very university they are entrusted with.
If the Board of Trustees really gave a damn about the university, they would have tabled the issue until the next meeting. Thus giving them the time to seek legal council and give the UK community ample time to have their voices heard.
I’m not quite sure what the official job description is for a member of the board, but I think I can say with a reasonable amount of confidence that it is not to ignore students, faculty and staff and then flout the rules.
Even so, one look at the board shows that it is structured to do just that. There is a grand total of one student representative on it, two faculty representatives and one staff representative. That’s four people. Four people on a 20-person board. I would love to hear the argument that says the students, the faculty and the staff account for one-fifth of what goes on at UK.
The remaining board members are appointed by the governor to six-year terms. I would imagine that being appointed by a governor, to a term that is longer than that of the governor himself, might give a person reason to believe the rules don’t really apply to them.
These 16 board members are essentially accountable to no one, and even if they were, they wouldn’t be accountable to the groups most affected by their actions.
I think it’s high time that we reconsider how our university is run. The current system, under which the students get screwed, the faculty gets screwed even more and the staff are screwed the most, simply cannot continue to exist unchecked.
The power of the flagship university of the Commonwealth needs to be vested in the hands of the people who make the university what it is day in and day out, not some random friend of the governor with more money than sense.
Justin Lamb is a political science junior. E-mail opinions@kykernel.com.
I’m starting to think people are missing the forest for the trees when it comes to this whole “coal lodge” problem. Then again, I think Jessica Hatterman hit the nail on the head with her cartoon in Thursday’s Kernel. I think it’s stupid for UK to be calling the new dorm a “coal” lodge, but, at the same time, I think it’s even more ridiculous that a new dorm for the basketball team is being built in the first place.
My freshman year, part of the ceiling collapsed in my dorm’s lobby, filling much of first floor with asbestos dust that had to be cleaned out by a HazMat team. UK has since closed that dorm, but no new housing has been built to replace it. A huge number of students spend the months of August and September languishing in oppressively hot dorm rooms because UK can’t find the money to put in air conditioning. Other dorms are filled with mold and grime that are not only an embarrassment to the university, but to the state as a whole.
If Mr. Craft really wants to make a difference, let him donate money to renovate the dorms used by the great majority of the student body. Seven million dollars to ensure that our basketball players have a new dorm is not money well spent, regardless of what they name the building.
- Jason Hope, Senior, Spanish & International Studies
Comrade Justin you learned well in class.