A little over a week ago, the University of Kentucky and Alliance Coal announced plans to name a new men’s basketball dormitory after a dirty, planet- and culture-killing fossil fuel known as “coal,” sparking campus protests that have elicited virtually no response from the university’s board of trustees and its figurehead, UK President Lee Todd, despite national television coverage.

Barefoot & Progressive has been doing a bang-up job covering this sad little war being waged in Kentucky’s academic nexus, the latest front being a passive-aggressive guerrilla sign campaign.

Essentially, the debate over naming the dorm hits to the heart of the Commonwealth’s schizophrenic love-hate relationship with coal, provoking the usual responses from defenders of the energy source to the the more socially/environmentally conscious opponents (whom mainly seem opposed to the increasing privatization of a public university)… but have they not seen U of L’s Yum! athletics center?