Request By:
Dr. Constantine W. Curris
President
Murray State University
Murray, Kentucky 42071
Opinion
Opinion By: Steven L. Beshear, Attorney General; By: Robert L. Chenoweth, Deputy Attorney General
This is in response to your recent letter to the Office of the Attorney General. You have asked this office to consider the effective date on which a newly elected student regent officially becomes a member of the Board of Regents at Murray State University. The background to your question is that on April 8, 1981, Mr. Mark McClure, a fulltime student and Kentucky resident, was elected President of the Murray State University student body. On April 15, 1981, Mr. McClure, along with all other elected student government officers, was sworn into office and immediately assumed his student government responsibilities.
You further informed us that the first meeting of the Murray State University Board of Regents, subsequent to the student body election, is scheduled for 1:30 p.m., Saturday afternoon, May 9, following commencement exercises that morning. Mr. McClure's predecessor, Mr. Terry L. Clark, will receive his undergraduate degree during those exercises.
The question you have presented for our consideration is whether the oath of office to be administered to Mr. McClure as the student regent may be delayed for part or all of the Regents' meeting on May 9 in order to allow Mr. Clark to serve and vote as the student regent for part or all of the May 9th meeting. As you indicated in your letter, KRS 164.320(8) is pertinent to this matter and reads as follows:
"The student member shall be the president of the student body of the university or college on whose board of regents he is to serve. If the president of the student body is not a full-time student who maintains permanent residency in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, a special election shall be held to select a full-time student who maintains permanent residency in this Commonwealth as the student member."
We are of the opinion the student representative on the Murray State Board of Regents is entitled to participate as a member upon being certified after the appropriate election as the president of the student body. By virtue of becoming the new student body president, with authority to act as such, the individual holding this office is entitled to engage in any activities taken up by the Board of Regents. While we see nothing wrong with asking the student, who already as of April 15, 1981, was sworn into office as the student body president, to also take the constitutional oath of office as provided in Section 228 of the Kentucky Constitution, we do not believe the constitutional oath is mandatorily required to be taken by the student member of the Board of Regents. Note that subsection (5) of KRS 164.320 states that "each appointed member of the board shall, at the first meeting following his appointment, take an oath to faithfully discharge his duties." (Emphasis Added). Reference to appointed members is to the eight (8) members appointed by the Governor. If the constitutional oath is desired to be taken, although not required, that oath may be administered at any time "by any judge, county judge-executive, notary public, clerk of a court, or justice of the peace, within his district or county." KRS 62.020.
Thus, it is the advisory opinion of this office that there is really no required oath of office to be delayed, and in that Mr. McClure has already been sworn into office as the student body president and assumed student government responsibilities, he is the student member of the Murray State University Board of Regents and should represent the student body in the upcoming May 9th meeting of the Board. By like token, since Mr. Clark will be neither the president of the student body nor a full-time student at the time of the upcoming Board meeting, he cannot participate in said meeting as the student Regent.