UK’s leaders should be embarrassed by behavior toward former faculty senate head | Opinion
The case of Professor DeShana Collett and her parting from the University of Kentucky is almost too crazy to believe.
It starts in early 2024, when the cartoon villains who run UK decided they were tired of the whiny intellectuals who actually teach the tens of thousands of students who come to Lexington every year.
So they came up with a plan to get rid of the University Senate, the governing council that approved curriculum and admissions standards, as part of the shared governance that has been a central tenet of academia for the past 50 years.
It seemed those pesky professors opposed too many of the things that would turn UK into an open enrollment widget-making factory, thereby making it not “nimble” enough for the rapid change of widget making.
Faculty also asked annoying questions about things like the enormous salaries made by these administrators or the decisions to solidify UK as a professional sports franchise with a medical school attached.
The University Senate, naturally, opposed this plan, but their valiant arguments against it were ignored by a board of trustees who are as putty in the hands of President Eli Capilouto and Executive Vice President of Everything Else Eric Monday. The fix, as they say, was in.
The Senate held a vote of no-confidence in Capilouto, using polling software owned by the Senate before it was dissolved. Then the administration tried to get their hands on the poll to see who exactly did not have confidence in their Dear Leader.
When DeShana Collett, then chair of the senate council, declined to turn it over, a vice-provost sent her an email that threatened her with a criminal investigation.
“I absolutely felt there was and would be retaliation,” Collett told me in a recent interview. “Why would they ever want to access individual voting records?”
Fast forward to this summer. Collett decided she was tired of fighting with a university that seemed certain to make her pay for her opposition. She formulated a separation agreement with UK administrators, in which she is paid $375,000 to go away and be quiet.
And, most of all, not file any open records requests about her own case. Which seems constitutionally unsound, but as her lawyer, Joe Childers, noted, “They were most insistent about that.”
And guess what? Childers confirmed there was never any investigation against Collett. They were just trying to intimidate her and her colleagues for standing up.
Before the separation package was signed, Collett and Childers had filed a bunch of open records requests to UK about her case. UK said nothing could be turned over because they were either “preliminary” or “attorney-client” privilege or unduly burdensome.
University Council William Thro, known for losing open records cases, was again overturned by the Attorney General, who said UK could turn release emails only to or from Monday that mentioned Colett. The agreement was signed before the emails were produced.
In an email to Childers in August, Thro said now-retired professor Davy Jones had done an open records request because Collett was not allowed to. Collett allegedly helped him, Thro said.
“While Dr. Jones is free to file whatever open records requests he wishes, the University expects Dr. Collett to abide by the terms of her agreement with the University,” the email said. “Please ask your client to quit assisting Dr. Jones.”
What are we even doing here, folks? Is this how the employees of a flagship university supposed to spend their time?
We could start a list of the faculty and administrators who have left UK in the past few years — who wants to be at a school where you’re not valued? — but we still have word counts at this paper, and it would be too long.
This whole saga is a sad and disgraceful chapter in the history of Kentucky’s flagship university.
Luckily, UK is still filled with wonderful students, staff and faculty who are doing good things in spite of, not because of, the people who lead them.
This story was originally published September 5, 2025 at 4:30 AM.
