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economics, fine arts, and communications to mention only a few, plus
this University includes a community college system. In recent
years, we've seen the linkage strengthen between the University and
community college systems in joint use of facilities and services
(e.g. Hazard Community College and library). In all likelihood we
are unique in comparison to all institutions of higher education in
the U.S.

With this background in mind, it is appropriate, then, that nearly
half of this Board is composed of representatives of a variety of
constituent groups. Constituent representation has been a
significant part of this Board for the past 48 years, and perhaps
much longer than that. It is noteworthy that as the comprehensive
nature of the institution changed, so did the nature of its governing
board.

One constituent group is the student body. We find it highly
appropriate for this Board to include representation from students.
It has been a healthy and a necessary addition to this Board. To
augment this representation with a student representative from the
community colleges, however, is a proposal, which in our opinion
needs further study and is one which at this time we are unable to
support.

The proposal leaves some significant issues unaddressed. One is the
potential difficulty of an election process among community college
students who are themselves geographically dispersed across the
Commonwealth, who are in two year programs, and therefore have
limited opportunity to identify system-wide student leadership.
Second, attending meetings of this Board could pose a potential
hardship on the selected student in making a large number of trips to
Lexington during the school term. These students often hold
part-time jobs or have other obligations. Further, it is not clear
to us whether this is a proposal that is foremost in the minds of
students across the 14 community colleges.

What would make much more sense to us is to give these students (and
their faculty counterparts) voting status on the advisory board of
their respective community colleges. These are the boards which
appear to us to be a more relevant decision-making body for these
students (and we understand that the students take their assignments
on these boards very seriously). Students and faculty were added as
nonvoting members of the community college advisory boards in 1970
soon after nonvoting faculty and student representatives were added
to the Board of Trustees,

In 1978, student and faculty representative on the Board of Trustees
were given voting status. However, voting rights were not extended
to the faculty and students on the community college advisory boards,
no doubt an oversight in the General Assembly.

For those who are interested in pursuing this issue with the General
Assembly, we feel a more positive and effective proposal would be one
which extends voting rights to the student and faculty members on the
community college advisory boards. Further, this alternative would
extend the voting franchise to a much larger number of students than
adding another student representative to this Board.