UT's investments draw concern

Your UT tuition is used to finance necessities like the construction and maintenance of facilities, programming activities vital to a budding academic institution, and the salaries of administration, faculty and staff, et cetera. Few students realize, though, that UT also uses a portion of its funds, annually, to invest in ...

Dooley deserves university’s thanks

I hate losing. Tennessee is a nationally elite football program, and losing seasons, let alone losing games, are not something I'm okay with. Playing in the SEC Championship every December may not be a moral imperative, but it's dang near close.

I've been following Tennessee Football for ...

UT loses by withholding benefits

It's been almost two months since Chancellors Cheek and Arrington released an official statement concerning the university's denial of health, time-off, and education waiver benefits to the same-sex partners of UT faculty.
Much has ensued since September, and, with any luck, much more is on the horizon.

On ...

Public campaign finance needed

The balance sheets are in, and unsurprisingly, the 2012 campaign season was the most expensive in world history. More than $6,000,000,000 were spent on political campaigns in 2012 alone.

Regardless of whether your candidate ended up on the winning side of the Electoral College this time around ...

Local issues, state races on ballot

While you likely have your mind set on Obama or Romney (or Johnson, Stein, or Anderson!), few students have given much thought to what next Tuesday could mean for state and local politics.

Local and state legislators are the officials that, in some real ways, draft policy that affects students ...

Voter ID laws hamper elections

This year's general election marks the first time that Tennesseans will be voting under the new voter identification laws. Tennessee is one of only five states where "strict" photo ID requirements are in place for the 2012 general election — which means that residents will have to provide a specific ...

SGA achieving some highs, lows

Recently, SGA has been up to more than a handful of things worth lauding, though there have been some missteps along the way. Let's consider SGA's highs and lows over the past few months.

First, let's get the lows out of the way. While the SGA boosted ...

Denying same-sex benefits troubling

UTK has experienced quite a hailstorm of bad press over the past couple of weeks. While I don't intend to resurrect those event(s) that we would all rather forget, one issue as of late does deserve a nod. Last week, the media sphere exploded with outrage regarding UT ...

Football prayer may be unconstitutional

On Sept. 17, Chancellor Jimmy Cheek issued a statement that UT will not discontinue prayer before home football games. Cheek's letter was issued in response to charges that UT's practice of prayer before games is unconstitutional. Did Cheek and his counsel make the right call?

Earlier this month ...

UT’s SGA differs greatly from UGA’s

How does student government on Rocky Top square up with SGA at similar institutions of higher education, like the University of Georgia?

A quick survey of the constitutions of each association yields small, yet potentially significant differences, such as UT's lack of a timeframe for the SGA President to ...

Student body delivers referendum

Last spring, UT students delivered a mandate to the SGA and UT administration.

Student voters made the overwhelming choice to support a referendum for "Greater Student Voice." The referendum, which "calls for greater student voice in the making of administrative decisions ... (and) for the administration to be more accessible to ...

SGA sets assorted policy agenda

When the current SGA leaders sought office last spring, they made clear the policy changes they would like to implement on this campus. Policy formulation can be a dynamic and community-wide effort, so I should stress that the platform of the winning (as well as losing) candidates cannot be attributed ...

SGA improves, still uses partisan symbols

Having taken office in April, all three of the top SGA leaders have hefty SGA leadership experience. They've all worked with student government during their entire tenure as undergraduates. I've both served with and run against them, and I can honestly say they have several good ideas to ...

Students support lends SGA legitimacy

Student governance at UT is an odd, frustrating thing.

Many students are unaware of its existence, and almost all of those who are aware of it have a distaste for it. It's a sort of phantasm that haunts UT student life. Like similar microcosms of government, it has fallen ...