The Lexington Herald-Leader is now having a hissy-fit over the nomination of Steve Branscum to be chairman of the trustees of the University of Kentucky, notwithstanding that Branscum has been on the Board of Trustees for three years, runs his own contracting business, and knows the ins and outs of finances. Problem, according to the H-L editorialist: Branscum is too gung-ho for athletics, a sort of back-handed way to say he's a dumb jock…not up to the job.
The paper's misgivings probably have more to do with the fact that Branscum is a republican and (gasp) a friend of Governor Fletcher. Never mind that democrats hand out sugar plums to cronies or relatives of every stripe (think Patton switching a relative on the state payroll to merit level late in his term), republicans just may not commit favortism or nepotism. What a laugh.
Even stranger was the pronouncement by Board faculty representative Ernest Yanarella that the chairman should be a woman for the profound reason that it was high time a woman ran the show. This comes from a teacher in the political science department (Egad!) and despite the fact that fellow board colleague Mira Ball had said "no way" to the job. This is not surprising in this day of warm-fuzziness and political correctness as the end-all and be-all of every enterprise on virtually all campuses, but for a distinguished professor and author of a number of books to claim gender as the prime consideration for any job is both condescending and…well, silly.
And so it goes.
Jim Clark
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