Editorial: Haggard, Clark will spend responsibly, urge safety

While both tickets presented good ideas and platforms, the Kernel is confident students would see more responsible spending and realistic problem-solving if they elect Dwight Haggard and Taylor Dale Clark as president and vice president of the Student Government Association.

The Kernel last year had high hopes for a safety phone application called LiveSafe.

But the $20,000 app will likely not do enough to improve safety.

Haggard and Clark realize there are better and less expensive ways to make UK a safer place to live, like working with the UK Police Department and campus organizations.

The app could help to stop individual crimes, but it does nothing to tackle the problem as a whole. Creating a safer campus takes more than a smartphone app; Haggard and Clark realize that.

In addition, much of campus does not feel comfortable approaching SGA, and this idea needs to be broken.

Haggard and Clark’s policy to encourage senators to leave the office for 30 minutes a week would allow them to connect with students they would not ordinarily meet. The more inclusive the student government, the better.

The Kernel editorial board agreed with Austin Mullen’s initiative to increase transparency by publishing monthly and quarterly budget reports on the SGA website.

“One of the pillars for our platform is transparency,” Mullen said at the debate Monday.

Creating a director of inclusion is also a strong platform point for Mullen.

The inclusion officer would work with the Student Task Force on Diversity and Inclusion, developed under current SGA President Jake Ingram in response to racist social media posts directed at National PanHellenic Council students.

But SGA can only be effective when it speaks for the entire student body, and Haggard’s platform was stronger in making that happen.

“The biggest problem now is that the student body is not being fully represented,” Haggard said.

Above all, the Kernel encourages whoever wins the election to speak for students while working with the administration. Too often the SGA president becomes a pawn for the Board of Trustees and does not speak to the student body’s true interest.

The Board position can be more than just symbolic.