Somewhere along the line, the powers that be at this university lost track of what is important.
They lost sight of the faculty, staff and students who make up this university. What about the 27,000 students who pay over $8,000 a year in tuiton and how much their money talks?
The students give over $216 million a year. Joe Craft and his buddies gave $7 million. But in the end, UK President Lee Todd and the Board of Trustees didn’t listen to the faculty, staff and students.
Of the 20 trustees, only three voted no to the renaming of the new basketball residence hall as “Wildcat Coal Lodge:†the student representative, Student Government President Ryan Smith, staff representative Robynn Pease and one of two faculty representatives, Ernie Yanarella.
The stand those three took is admirable. They listened to their peers and said no to naming a building for corporate coal. They heard students say no, faculty say no and staff say no, and instead of putting their own interests or towing the party line, they said no.
On Tuesday, the UK administration showed its true colors when it comes to hot topics on campus. UK will not risk being a pioneer in green energy — despite claiming it is a goal — if it means getting out of bed with Big Coal.
UK will not honor its student’s, faculty’s and staff’s wishes when it comes to ruining its relationship with potential donors.
Money wins out with the UK administration, not the money the students pay for tuiton, of course — just the money that donors give.
In the end, UK’s administration and the Board of Trustees decided to give this university the type of black eye that it claims it’s trying to avoid. There’s nothing top-20 about naming a building after a fossil fuel that will eventually deplete.
This state’s residents are rooted in stereotypes about being backwoods coal miners that are backwards about everything. UK has claimed, in effect through the top-20 plan, that it would like to reverse that trend.
Wildcat Coal Lodge is 20 steps in the wrong direction.
In Tuesday’s main board meeting, around 20 students showed up to let their thoughts be heard. They were silenced. Todd claimed the students didn’t go through the formal channels to request to speak.
The First Amendment wasn’t written with the idea that free speech was welcomed only when it favored a particular side or was tempered as to not offend.
But Todd must be a little shaky on his constitutional knowledge.
In the end, after a quick vote, those silenced students felt compelled to be heard at last. The trustees decided to duck and run for cover while UK Police pushed out of the room those trying to speak.
It is hard to see just one fault in Tuesday’s action. The complete show was disastrous for the university.
But between silencing students’ opposition, ignoring the will of the campus as a whole and quickly approving the worst building name UK has ever come across, the administration and the trustees made one thing clear — if you didn’t write the check, you don’t matter.
What a wonderful black eye Todd and Co. have put on this university. One would think it as black as coal itself.
I could not agree more. It is important to try and do what little I can to try and make the world a cleaner and better place. The Trustees’ decision was incredibly reckless and opens the way for companies as big and impacting as coal companies to seem charitable by donating money and ultimately hide the damage their companies do. A seven million dollar donation will not clean up my home town and undo the extensive amount of damage done by coal production.
For those who automatically say to people opposing that if we don’t like coal, we should leave and go live somewhere else: No. Kentucky is my home. I grew up here- in McCreary County. The coal mines provided income for my grandparents just the same as it did many of my friends’ families for the past century. This state is where I grew up, and where I would like to start my family. With that in mind, I think it’s reprehensible that a state-run UK has decided to allow coal companies to advertise at the highest level in Kentucky: UK Basketball. I am glad UK has such generous donors. However, that donation does not, nor will it ever undo the ecological harm and deaths linked to coal production and energy production. It is scientifically proven that the use of coal is responsible for global warming, which kills millions worldwide each year. Does that make it OK because these deaths are in a rural Indian fishing village being inundated by rain and flooded more each year? Will it erase the fact that every time it rains hard the water in creeks and streams around my home turn from a beautiful blue, to a crimson red or rust color as pollutants pour from the long-abandoned mines? Does it erase the sulfur smell that burns my nostrils and makes some peoples’ nose bleed? Not at all. Unfortunately, the overall concensus in a state like Kentucky where coal provides so many jobs, is that we’ll look away from the tragedies of coal because we need the money now. Most people believe it warrants sacrificing our future because we must live for today.
I grew up with five hungry mouths in my household in McCreary County, Kentucky. I know the difficulty it is to survive here. I’m quite thankful for the cheap utilities coal allowed my family to have- it’s difficult for many poor families to pay them. I also understand most people will do anything to provide for their children. The problem is that we don’t look down the road… That’s where the greatest problem of coal lies. The fact of the matter is, coal production in Kentucky WILL end. It may be 50 years down the road, maybe 100 years. When that coal is gone, and the money spent from producing that coal is gone we’ll only have the scars from coal. Increased cancer rates, irreparable environmental damage, and the loss of thousands of jobs will be the only mark coal will leave behind. With that said, it’s shameful and embarrasing as a citizen of Kentucky, that the board of trustees condoned Coal today by renaming the living quarters the Wildcat Coal Lodge.
What’s next for Kentucky? I am suspicious that we may next see a new Commonwealth Marlboro Stadium, or a Bourbon Tennis Facility… It is truly embarrasing that a college institution that dedicates itself entirely to the education and growth of young minds has turned its head blindly and allowed what happened today.
Oh well. Unwanted buildings do have a habit of burning down on north campus anyhow. Any old timers remember the old ROTC building where New North hall is now? Heh.
Thanks for sharing your perspective Isaiah. You can tell it is heartfelt.
Thanks also to the editorial board for posting this. It is refreshing to see this!
Of the 20 trustees, only three voted no to the renaming of the new basketball residence hall as “Wildcat Coal Lodge:â€
WOW IMAGINE THAT 17 to 3. MAJORITY WINS JUST AS IT SHOULD BE.
Coal Companies are not evil, coal companies are regulated at the Federal, State and Local Government levels. If you hate Coal Companies, you hate your Government.
The students give over $216 million a year. Joe Craft and his buddies gave $7 million. Yeah and Joe Taxpayer gives ten times the student amount each and every year so that UK can train Liberal Assholes who have not any concept of reality.
UK will not risk being a pioneer in green energy.
Earth to Editorial Board Green Energy is a myth and here is why:
Pimentel is convinced, based on his research that when all fourteen types of energy inputs are included in the production of biofuels — especially ethanol from corn — that there is a net energy loss, not a gain, however modest, as others contend. He sees ethanol production as “relatively energy intensive.”
Pimentel is just a pessimistic about wood waste and switch grass, neither of which he contends are positive energy producers when compared to oil and gas.
The term “Renewable Energy†is commonly used these days and everybody seems to have a pretty good idea what it means or stands for. Instant associations of this term include solar power, wind power, hydroelectricity and perhaps biomass and biofuels. Renewable Energy is heralded as the saviour of our planet for a power hungry civilization who is currently burning fossil fuels to meet an ever increasing power demand. But is it true that we could go about business as usual, continue on the same road of ever increasing energy demand, if only we switched to 100% Renewable Energy? To answer this question, let’s go back to the basics of physics: consider, energy cannot be produced, generated, recycled or renewed. It can only be converted (from one state into another). However, every time we perform a conversion, it comes at a cost called entropy, which is a loss of useful or available energy. In thermodynamics, energy is made up of two components: entropy and enthalpy. Entropy is diffuse heat energy, many times associated with waste heat from mechanical or chemical processes and represents – to the largest extent – the useless component of energy that is unavailable to carry out work. Entropy is also associated with the level of disorder in a system. Enthalpy on the other side is the useful (non-diffuse) energy component that we can readily use to carry out work. Thermodynamics teach us that every time we use enthalpic energy (eg change it from a state of stored chemical energy into mechanical work) the total entropy of the system in which it occurs (our planet) increases. The larger the energy potentia, the larger is the amount of useful work we get from it. And here we are at the core of the problem: the entropy of a system (heat and disorder) increases over time as enthalpic energy is spent. This process is irreversible and forever reduces the usability of useful energy that remains. For this reason, fundamentally and despite popular believe, there is no such thing as “Renewable Energyâ€. Out of all sustainable energy initiatives available, the drastic reduction of our energy demand, also know as “demand side abatement†is the single most important one. If we continue to increase our energy consumption, even if we use “renewable†sources exclusively, we will necessarily also continue to increase the entropy, waste heat and resulting temperature in our planet’s atmosphere. Before we started burning fossil fuels, our planet was in good balance between the sun’s radiation absorbed and the heat earth re-radiated into space. This balance depends on many factors, including the gas composition of the atmosphere and cloud cover, however their individual roles and interdependencies in context with radiation absorbed and re-radiated are complex and still poorly understood. As we are running out of time to fix the problems associated with climate change, we cannot afford to take new chances and make assumptions about the safe and abundant use of “renewable†energies. Instead, we should take the more conservative view that we live on a planet with limited, finite resources, the use of which produces an ever increasing entropy. Since this process is irreversible, the best strategy for us is to reduce our energy consumption and thereby extend our lease.
Cornell professor Dr. David Pimentel’s address to the Sustainable Energy Forum’s 2006 Peak Oil and Environment conference.
Since mentioning coal stokes debates about climate, here is a post from The Guardian.
“A map launched at the Science Museum in London has been developed using the latest peer-reviewed science from the Met Office Hadley Centre and other leading impact scientists. It shows that the land will heat up more quickly than the sea, and high latitudes, particularly the Arctic, will have larger temperature increases.”
http://www.guardian.co.uk/environment/interactive/2009/oct/22/climate-change-carbon-emissions
Rick James you’re absolutely right. Why should taxpayers support the empowerment and education of people outside of Joe Six Pack’s limited viewpoint. UK can be a student run co-opt university and we can get rid of Dr. Todd, the Board of Trustees, and separate from dependence on backwards people and corporate interest. Frankly it’s time for the university to be run by the students themselves. The syllabus was invented in the middle ages because it was a contractual agreement that students held the professor they communally hired to.
I love how 20 students show up to protest out of 27,000 ….
And you wonder why it passed 17-3.
OK Hippies … I will make you a deal, as soon as you make $7 million dollars, you can rename the Lodge anything you would like. Till then …. shut it.
Citizen X says: “Frankly it’s time for the university to be run by the students themselves. ”
hehehe…..hahaha…uh.. haaahaaha.hah! Whew you funny! hahaaha heehehe haaa………..
Something that is being quickly overlooked in this debate is that there were 5 students in the audience in support of the re-naming. Why was this overlooked you ask? These students decided to be respectful of the board and their proceedings rather than screaming, shouting, and making a scene. These students who listened respectfully to the decisions of their elected leaders where angry with their “no” votes, but decided that this was not the time nor the place to address it for it would accomplish nothing.
Additionally, the channels for speaking in these meetings were set into motion to create a smooth and efficient voting process, not to suppress the speaking abilities of the people. If anyone and everyone was aloud to speak during these proceedings at whatever juncture they so deemed necessary, nothing would ever get accomplished.
Just because you have the loudest voice in the room, does not mean that it is the most correct nor does it imply that it speaks for everyone.
Well when you support rape, in this case the rape of the land and the school as a whole, you probably don’t want to speak out.