I like football. I grew up watching the Pittsburgh Steelers. I sat it totally miserable conditions to watch Kentucky football perform in a totally miserable fashion. I bought years of season tickets until I got tired of the greed demonstrated by UK athletics.
So today’s story in the Herald Leader just makes me angry.
The University of Kentucky plans to spend $6.25 million this summer installing a new sound system and video scoreboards in Commonwealth Stadium before the first home football game on September 10.
The UK Athletics Association would pay for the upgrade using $3.15 million in private funds and a $3.1 million internal loan from the cash-strapped university, which has not given raises to most employees for three years.
If the proposal is approved by the Board of Trustees, the Council on Postsecondary Education and the legislature's Capital Projects and Bond Oversight Committee, the athletics association would repay the loan over a period not to exceed five years at a variable interest rate that is now 1.64 percent.
I don’t have a problem with a bunch of old, fat, white guys spending their money buying speaker systems and score boards. It’s their money.
I do have a problem with a case-strapped University giving a $3.1 million dollar loan at 1.64 percent interest to a bunch of old, fat, white guys. Especially when they want a 6 percent hike in tuition.
Kentucky's Council on Postsecondary Education will vote Thursday on whether to allow the University of Kentucky, the University of Louisville and other state colleges to increase tuition by 6 percent…….. At the University of Kentucky, the increase would be $518 for freshmen and sophomores and $533 for juniors and seniors. That would make total resident tuition for upperclassmen $9,392.
Do you think the students are going to get loans for tuition at 1.64 percent? Not bloody likely.
If the Council on Postsecondary Education approves both of these requests I want to hear the logic behind the decisions. It had better be something better than old, fat, white guys need new toys.
