WKU's Poland Hall Is Coming Down and Alumni Will Understand

"Exploding Commode Floods Poland."

That is the first thing that entered my head when I learned what I learned today. When I was a student at Western Kentucky University, I stayed in Hugh Poland Hall for five of my eight semesters. Well, I just found out that my favorite residence hall has an imminent date with the wrecking ball; nearby Douglas Keen Hall has already been demolished.

WKU Dorms Demolished

When you spend most of your time in a place between the ages of 19 and 22, you form great, long-lasting bonds, and you learn a great deal about yourself. So when you find out that a structure, so important to your growth, is about to disappear, you get hit with nostalgia waves.

Oh, by the way, that initial comment? One night, a toilet on a lower floor of Poland Hall (I lived on the top floor, the ninth) blew up and wreaked enormous havoc, as you can imagine. The College Heights Herald reporter who wrote it up used that as a headline. Ingenious.

And a great memory.

As for Keen Hall, as many people as I knew who lived there, I never once set foot inside of it. Both Keen Hall and Poland Hall were built in 1968, and nearly-60-year-old dormitories don't hang around anymore; that's perfectly understandable.

WKU Practically Unrecognizable...But in a Good, Expected Way

But you can't help the nostalgia sometimes. We're only human. And the campus was already borderline unrecognizable, anyway, with the addition of other dorms over the years, rerouting of on-campus traffic, and the conversion of some drives into walkways. Throw in the complete makeover of the university center and your first visit back to WKU after several years might include, "Geez, I've been here a million times; I'm SURE this is Western...isn't it?"

It's all good. It's progress. If I had kids heading off to college, I'd feel better if the dorm they were about to move into wasn't six decades old. It's how it is. Nothing lasts forever.

It's why there's always so much traffic on Memory Lane.