WKU Folklife program has many benefits

As a WKU Folk Studies Program alumna and a former Kentucky Folklife Program Specialist, I am disappointed in the university’s decision to “starve out” these programs. Folk Studies is unique among WKU’s academic offerings, highlighting Kentucky art forms while providing a holistic education with practical experience. WKU is a beacon of Kentucky cultural documentation, with a research archive featuring fifty years of student and faculty work.

Folk Studies alumni work throughout the country breaking ground in fields that matter most, as folklore is rooted in privileging the lived experiences of marginalized people. Program graduates are equipped to address immediate concerns in the national narrative like racial injustice, economic disparity and the rural-urban divide.

WKU Folk Studies is a leader in public folklore and adjacent fields like oral history, historic preservation and museum studies. Folk Studies faculty have produced fundamental scholarship, read widely in folklore programs and related studies.

Most importantly, no program more authentically addresses the “town and gown” divide in Bowling Green and beyond. The Kentucky Folklife Program unites artists, writers and community scholars through its digital magazine, defying institutional elitism by welcoming research on Kentucky life, regardless of background and education. Both programs’ intentional work to foster meaningful relationships with communities outside of, and even deliberately harmed by, the “ivory tower” – like the former residents of Jonesville – should be applauded. Their relationship-building with the Bosnian community is a model for forging responsible partnerships between the university and its home.

The consequences of this action are best expressed with the idiom “penny wise; pound foolish.” This choice to remove a pillar of WKU’s culture, identity, uniqueness and exceptionality in favor of short-term, minimal thriftiness, demonstrates a lack of vision among the university and college administrations. Abandoning exceptional programs with strong outreach makes for an uncompetitive university.

Sarah M. Schmitt

Lexington

Do they really want us to recycle?

I own a business and we recently replaced all of our 8-foot fluorescent lights with more energy efficient LED lights. Now I am finding out the difficulty of disposing of 25, 8-foot tubes. These type of lights contain mercury, so they are not supposed to go in a landfill. In checking around there is only one place locally that will recycle these tubes but at a cost of $0.66 per foot of tube. That makes our cost to just dispose of these tubes at over $100. At a time when our country is supposedly concerned about our environment, they make it very hard and costly for its citizens to actively participate.

If any business out there still uses 8-foot fluorescents, I’ve got some free tubes for you.

Robert Ray

Bowling Green