The Board of Trustees is on a roll.
First, they disallow any outside voices to be heard on the Wildcat Lodge issue, and now the board decides the current policy for getting on their agenda works just fine.
According to a Nov. 18 Kernel article, UK President Lee Todd, a committee and the full Board of Trustees must approve a request in a 30 hour time frame prior to the meeting, all while the meeting agenda becomes open to the public at 9 a.m. the day before the meeting.
About the policy, UK spokesman Jimmy Stanton said, “It’s been in place for 39 years, so obviously it’s working,”
There are plenty of things that were in place for 39 years or longer that didn’t “work.â€
Does a policy that gives concerned parties mere hours of time to get on the agenda really work — or does it work to the advantage of UK?
As it stands now, students have one representative on the board, Student Government President Ryan Smith. In order to speak up, students have to go through Smith or comply with this vacuous policy, in hopes of being put on the agenda of a meeting where they may be heard. Faculty and staff with busy work schedules and jobs to preserve also deal with the same ludicrous policy that reeks of secrecy.
Anyone wishing to speak out at a meeting would essentially have to know what is coming up on the agenda before it happens. It is one thing to try to keep personal agendas and other nonsense off the board’s agenda, but to enact a policy that effectively bans all dissenting thought is ridiculous.
The board must rethink its stance on this issue. Transparency only benefits the board. So when controversial decisions such as Wildcat
Coal Lodge are delivered, at the very least, the UK community feels like it has been heard and a high and mighty group of figureheads hasn’t played dictators. As it currently stands, the community doesn’t feel like it’s being heard.
Changing that would work.
Did the tobacco industry not donate enough money to UK?
The extraction and burning of coal costs thousands of lives, which we are told is “worth it” because of the jobs provided.
Tobacco takes thousands of lives, provides jobs to many but is banned from UK’s campus. What’s the difference? (see first question)
I’d say the policy works just fine… for the Board.