Big Basketball and Big Coal: Two Tastes that Taste Great Together
By There are consequences for devotion to big coal?
Wendell Berry, perhaps Kentucky’s best-known writer, is pulling many of his personal papers from the University of Kentucky’s archives to protest the naming of Wildcat Coal Lodge.
Berry excoriated his alma matter in a Dec. 20, 2009, letter, saying the decision to name a new dorm for UK basketball players the Wildcat Coal Lodge “puts an end” to his association with the university.
“The University’s president and board have solemnized an alliance with the coal industry, in return for a large monetary ‘gift,’ granting to the benefactors, in effect, a co-sponsorship of the University’s basketball team,” Berry wrote in the typewritten letter. “That — added to the ‘Top 20’ project and the president’s exclusive ‘focus’ on science, technology, engineering, and mathematics — puts an end to my willingness to be associated in any way officially with the University.”