Through planning and hand work, SG continues its progress

Times have changed fellow Wildcats, as it is October and your football team keeps winning and your Student Government keeps working. Since our last chat, we officially kicked off the year with the first Board of Trustees meeting and the State of the Campus address. I hope you were there and got your free “See Blue” T-shirts as we kicked off the new marketing campaign.

I have joined President Lee Todd, the provost, and several deans and faculty members and traveled across the state meeting and talking with alumni and future students sharing with them what’s going on here at UK.

The best part of these trips has been the ability for me to speak one on one with Todd and Provost Kumble Subbaswamy about various student initiatives. Developing these relationships will be the key to accomplishing many of our goals this year.

Through these partnerships, we have been able to find funding for a variety of campus programs, for example the Violence, Intervention and Prevention Center. This past weekend, Brittany and I attended the SEEDS retreat. We hope you will follow our lead in making campus safety a priority for you.

We hope you enjoyed the Corey Smith concert as much as we did. The benefits of the sponsorship between SG, the Interfraternity Council and the Panhellenic Council provided an excellent event for over 1,000 students.

To kick off our involvement with Kentucky state government, we co-sponsored a gubernatorial forum with Steve Beshear this past Friday. We had a packed house mixed with students, faculty and staff in the Worsham Theater, and it is our hope that we can repeat this event with Gov. Ernie Fletcher. An invitation has been extended and we will continue to follow up to bring him to campus.

We are sponsoring a lot of events in order to increase attention to the upcoming general election. This week we will be conducting a voter registration drive in Patterson Plaza. You can update your registration for any county in Kentucky, so don’t hesitate to fill out a card. Millions of people around the world do not have this opportunity so don’t waste your chance to influence change.

We also want you to know we have your best interest in mind in regard to the newly considered ordinances and city laws regarding landlord permits. We hosted the Lexington Landlord Association yesterday afternoon to form a partnership before this matter reaches the city council. You will hear plenty from us in the next month in regard to this issue. If you are passionate about this issue and may one day live off campus we welcome you to stop by our office in the Student Center and help out.

Also coming up, we will be hosting a number of forums regarding the University Studies Program requirement and the suggested changes. I worked closely with the faculty and administration last semester to help revise our USP to make the program more effective for students. I really need to hear your input so keep your eyes and ears open for these forums.

We are excited to announce that the freshmen for our Leadership Development Program have been selected. These 40 individuals will put in a great deal of work to increase the visibility and functionality of SG this year.

There is another opportunity to get involved through our upcoming freshman elections. Four freshmen will have the opportunity to represent their class in the SG Senate. Stop by the office for more information. This is the only opportunity for freshmen to get elected at UK in the fall.

I also encourage you to join me for the ribbon cutting for the newly renovated Center for Student Involvement at 10 a.m. on Thursday. Thanks goes out to Todd, Student Services Director Rhonda Strouse and the many others who have worked tirelessly to make this happen. This is the focal point for student leadership development on campus and is my home here at UK.

Keep on living the dream friends, and I hope to see you at Keeneland this weekend.

Nick Phelps is the president of UK’s Student Government. E-mail [email protected].