By Joshua Qualls

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Republican Congressman Andy Barr was scheduled to speak at Omicron Delta Kappa’s annual Transformational Leadership Seminar at UK on Wednesday afternoon but was absent because of a scheduling mishap.

Stephen Voss, a political science associate professor, was “asked to greet Rep. Barr because he used to teach at the political science department,” so that Voss would be “a friendly face that he knew.”

“I used to be a reporter myself and I know that when there’s an event where a congressman is supposed to appear, the chance that they will be late is high,” Voss said. “I brought a couple of political science majors with me and I warned them long before it happened to … expect tardiness or lack of attendance.”

Christina Walker, president of ODK’s Nu Circle Chapter at UK, said that every year they try to have someone at the seminar who can provide insight on how to develop better leadership skills.

“Unfortunately the person who was dealing with the scheduling accidentally put the wrong date, and so [Barr] thought it was actually for tomorrow — so he was at another event in another county,” Walker said. “His district manager had to come and take over.”

When ODK realized that Barr would not be able to make it, Walker spoke with journalism professor Buck Ryan, an ODK member, and UK law professor Paul Salamanca about getting the conversation about leadership started — after a brief ODK promotional video, Walker invited them onstage.

Ryan said that he has worked on previous Transformational Leadership Seminars with ODK’s faculty secretary, John Herbst, but that he had just had the event on his calendar and planned to attend.

Tyler White, the congressman’s district director, arrived 30 minutes late and filled in for Barr when his office realized that there was a schedule conflict on Wednesday afternoon. Unlike Barr, White is not an ODK member.

“It was a staffing error — not a Congressman error,” said White. “This is something that is very important to the congressman … We’re lucky enough that leadership is something that’s inherent in a lot of us—especially those of us that are on staff with the Congressman so it ended up being a decent fit and I feel extremely blessed to have had the opportunity to come out here and speak.”

White said that Barr would like to reschedule his appearance with ODK at some point in the future.

“If we did [reschedule the event] it would probably be something that would be next semester,” Walker said.