By Megan Brewer — 

U of L’s presidential search that is set to begin soon is going to be kept confidential. Students and staff won’t know who is running for president of the university.

The board of trustees is choosing to do this to protect the candidates from the media and not scare any potential candidates away.

“That kind of person is not going risk their careers by becoming a public figure during an interviewing process,” said board of trustees Chair David Grissom.

Students will have little input about who is hired as our next president. The only input students will have is through SGA president and board of trustees student representation Vishnu Tirumala.

In a letter to the editor, Tirumala said, “However we – as trustees – will need input from the community on the qualities of a good president as well as the challenges they must address.”

In other words, students will only get to decide what qualities they want in a president. We have to put all of our trust into other people to decide who the president will end up being.

There are a lot of qualities students at U of L want in a president, but just because someone has all of those qualities doesn’t mean that students will want that person as our president.

We should know who the individuals running for president are. We should know how this person plans to get U of L out of the current hole it’s in and everything they want to keep the same.

Then we need to be given the right to be a deciding factor in who becomes U of L’s next president.

Instead, students are going to be left wondering who our next president is right up until the announcement. After that we’ll have no choice but to hope for the best from our new president.

The reason there is a university at all is because of students. The individual that is our next president is going to be a huge deciding factor in our time at U of L. To not give students more of a say in a decision that affects us the most is irrational.

The board is proving that the ongoing issues of transparency are going to continue throughout this search. They’re once again putting students last.

The board needs to stop keeping secrets and start involving students with decisions more often. The presidential search would be the best way to do this.

Who knows, it could end up being a way for the university to start earning back student’s trust.

File Photo / The Louisville Cardinal