The 2007-08 Gold Forks: ‘And the losers are…’

As another finals week opens, it’s time for the Kernel to lampoon all the things that made this year special, then take no responsibility for what we’ve just written.

Sure, there are no more issues of the Kernel until the summer edition starts up in a month, but go ahead and send us letters to the editor about these if you really want. Or post a comment on our Web site (www.50.63.25.108), where a faithful core of summer readers will hopefully see it.

Without further ado, we present the 2007-08 Golden Forks:

  • The “daddy knows best” award goes to Nick Phelps, the Student Government president who helped shoot down a student fee increase that two-thirds of student voters approved.
  • The “I do my best thinking behind closed doors” award goes to Mayor Jim Newberry, for dreaming up new ways to spend taxpayer money — like CentrePointe, or replacing Rupp Arena — then telling the public about it as the bulldozers show up.
  • The “joke is on Kentucky” award goes to Gov. Steve Beshear, for the 24 percentage point difference between the full funding he promised UK during the election and the enormous cuts he recommended in his budget a few months later.
  • The “out of touch” award goes to President Lee Todd, for stating that a luxury hotel will attract young people to Lexington for their college education. Well, the two have one thing in common: They’re both overpriced.
  • The “cigar is just a cigar” award goes to Dudley Webb, for the, uh, familiar design of the proposed CentrePointe development.
  • The “Henry Clay” award goes to the Webb Companies, for heeding to community concerns over the CentrePointe development by cutting five floors from the proposal while still demolishing Lexington’s only hope of an entertainment district.
  • The “hit snooze too many times” award goes to the Robinson Forest protesters, for showing up to demonstrate outside a Board of Trustees meeting long after most of the trustees had already gone upstairs.
  • The “those darn kids and their rock ‘n roll music” award goes to the burning couch, for becoming a favorite symbol of the community members who would rather think of college students as hooligans than neighbors.
  • The “false sense of security” award goes to UK Alert, for telling some people about some emergencies, sometimes.
  • The “false sense of insecurity” award goes to Students for Concealed Carry on Campus, for sporting stylish holsters that were, thankfully, empty.
  • The “rewrite the dictionary” award goes to the Genocide Awareness Project, for being too busy searching for gruesome images of fetuses to bother looking up the definition of “genocide.”
  • The “I’ve got two, two, anybody need two?” award goes to Jesse Parrish and Blake Burnett, for ultimately throwing away their SG careers to scalp tickets for a concert that nobody wanted to go to anyway.
  • The “Fidel Castro campaign” award goes to Tyler Montell, for pulling out a surprise victory over a slew of mostly imaginary write-in candidates. Sorry, “Darth Vader,” you have to be a full-time student to be SG president.
  • The “poor man’s disco” award goes to the UK fire marshal, for pumping the dorms full of theatrical smoke so that students can practice fearing for their lives and belongings.
  • The “turned-out pockets” award goes to the SG Appropriations and Revenue Committee, for running out of money to give to student organizations a few months before those organizations ran out of time to use the money.
  • The “going pro in something, anything” award goes to Ramel Bradley, for leaving the high-visibility world of UK basketball and pursuing a small-scale record release.
  • The “rolling blackouts” award goes to the campus squirrels, for strategically knocking out the power to parts of campus while foraging for food. At least deregulation wasn’t at fault.
  • The “Mahmoud Ahmadinejad” award goes to the Kentucky senators and representatives who supported banning universities from offering domestic partner benefits, for taking the stand that while there might be gay people in Kentucky, they just don’t deserve the same health insurance as everyone else.
  • The “looks won’t get you everywhere” award goes to Rep. Stan Lee, R-Lexington, for having a wonderful mustache but pretty much nothing else to offer Kentucky.