Naming of Kentucky Hoops Dorm Creates Stir
A group of wealthy donors wants to give the University of Kentucky $7 million to build a dorm for the school's basketball team, which is widely considered one of the top teams entering the 2009-2010 college basketball season. But there's one caveat: The dorm's name must include the word "coal" somewhere in its title.
That stipulation by the group called Difference Makers has caused controversy on the Lexington campus, the Kentucky Kernel reports.
"My opinion is pretty much that coal has been a foundation of Kentucky's economy for many decades, and it's going to be the foundation for many decades to come," says Stephen Gardner, chairman of the UK Mining and Energy Foundation. "Coal research is very important to UK. All of the colleges do a lot of research into coal, and coal supplies a lot of the money for the research."
Opponents of including "coal" in the dormitory's title say that the school would be selling out to the coal industry. Martin Mudd, a UK student and member of Kentuckians for the Commonwealth, tells the Kernel that the university shouldn't allow a free advertisement for the coal industry on its campus.
"My personal opinion is that the University of Kentucky has to choose whether it's going to be a friend of big coal or a friend of Kentucky and Kentuckians," Mudd tells the Kernel. "With this announcement, it's clear what the administration feels about that, but I don't think that that view represents everybody on this campus."
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Tags: colleges | University of Kentucky | college athletics
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Reader Comments
Donation or purchase?
Since this is a discussion about a facility at an academic institution that is essentially an extension of the state government, primarily operating on state funds, it appears to me that there is a definitional inaccuracy with the terminology. A "donation" is a "gift," which normally carries an inherent notion that there is no "returned consideration." If there is a mandated return, then the act ceases to be a donation and becomes a purchase by virtue of the contractual relationships. Remember, UK is still an academic institution and linguistic definitions matter, regardless of the non-academic functions of the school. The question is the ownership of naming rights, which have been purchased in the past. The idea that the monetary transfer is a donation is inaccurate. Any idea that it is a donation is erased with return consideration. Then it becomes advertising, by virtue of definition.. That is why, at state facilities, this has normally been limited to the names of people who have made a significant contribution to the entity. The problem is that there has been a precedent established. Anyway, I thought Wildcat Lodge was already the most "posh" housing on campus and "state of the art." How about building new dorms for the real students, instead of the one's who can merely through a ball through a hoop? Heck, sometimes they can't even do that. An even better idea is a series of public housing projects for the residents of the state who have been affected the most by barbaric attitudes and actions of the coal companies and the industry as a whole. Basketball sells. Abundant adequate public housing ain't sexy enough. The whole process is too analogous to prostitution, except that the "donor" or "purchaser" normally doesn't want advertising by virtue of naming rights.Never mind the possible analogies of the light refraction properties of coal and the contemporary African-American athlete. It's a "heated" topic (pun intended), but the whole idea is one of priority misalignment.
Money and Basketball are King
Money and basketball rule here in Wildcat Land. We sell our souls for either, put the two together and ghees. Those baskettball players must have a posh place to live, don't you know. Those coal people wouldn't think of putting any money toward academics. If you educate people they might figure out coal is an antiquated fuel. It's use is detroying our mountains, our water, our air and our climate.
Kentucky Dorm Name
If the word "coal" must be in the dorm's name, let's do a play on words and call the dorm Locoal. Then when a student should ask another student where they are heading, the response could be: "I'm going to the Locoal Dorm."
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