For shame!

Did you see the story from that Kentucky airport in Hebron..(sometimes erroneously referred to as the Cincinnati airport)?

It seems that the board of trustees search committee interviewing candidates for UK president shielded them with a large black cloth as they got to the finals. The same kind of cloth coroner's use to give the dead deserved privacy.

(Boy, what analogies I could draw here, but...)

The shielding, from reporters of course, also meant they were being shielded from the public, from the very Kentuckians who pay for the search expenses, and the salary, etc. of the next UK president.

As I have written earlier, I am sorry to see Dr. Todd go. I am sorry board members feel they need a national seach firm to find suitable candidates...I think knowing such candidates is part of Dr. Todd's job; and the board's. I am also sorry they hired (at our expense, of course, one way or the other) a salary consultant who said the next prez must be paid more...much more. Maybe, but isn't that in comparison with some overpaid CEOs we know (whether CEO of colleges or business firms)? All are paid more than the President of the United States. Something is wrong here, no matter who the President is.

But I am the sorriest, as a journalist and a Kentuckian, that the search committee feels the need to shield us from the finalists. Yes, I know the candidates' rationale: protect our IDs or we won't be candidates for your job. (If they are so stable in their current job maybe, just maybe, they aren't the one for us.)

To mark this revolting development properly, I have a suggestion...so we will always remember how much faith the trustees have in us: when the time comes for the official portrait of the person selected, let it be a lovely frame, bordering nothing but a piece of black cloth.