University of Louisville Student Elections

The University of Louisville has had its fair share of scandals. As much as we’d like to think they are a thing of the past, it seems that when it comes to racial justice, the BLM sign on the side of the building is just for show.

Dr. Ricky Jones has been posting quite a bit of late about the mass exodus of educators of color from the University, to little avail.

It’s not surprising then that the same tactics we’ve seen being used to railroad due process in Kentucky’s General Assembly have been seen across Kentucky’s stakeholder groups, as well. From school board meetings to PTA meetings, to grassroots advocacy groups, to teachers unions, to student government elections right here in Mitch country, the University of Louisville.

Check out this real-time example from the University of Louisville’s Student Government Association elections. Did we mention the Mitch McConnell Center (and Mitch himself) has a great deal of power and influence here?

If you think “this election is too close so let’s do a run off” sounds familiar, it’s because it is.

Last year, when two black JCTA teachers were pitted against one another for the only “open” seat on the PAC that endorses candidates each election cycle, the election results came back declaring one of them the winner. But when the results were published, there were some strange things about them that had people asking questions. When JCTA leadership couldn’t successfully convince members that the election was valid in its current form, they declared the other teacher as having the most votes, but later came back and said it wasn’t enough and they would need to do a run off. I said only open seat earlier because the committee confirms the rest based on nominations from President McKim. He could have easily appointed both of these women, but instead he made them duke it out and still awarded it to the person he planned on awarding it to all along, despite what the majority of voting members wanted.

We documented it here: