Wednesday, December 06, 2006
I walk by them, dude!
A compelling reason to save the trees:
"You can't replace these trees," said [Karen Dabrusin], who graduated from UC Berkeley in 1966. "We walked by these on our way to the football games. You can put a building somewhere else." Sure, that makes sense. I walk by my door jam on a daily basis. Heck, even more than once a day, sometimes! It's irreplaceable! If anyone tries to tear it down, or replace it with something else, it'll be a travesty!
But that's silly. There are better reasons:
"We are concerned because the oak trees represent one of the last coastal live oak groves in the city of Berkeley," said Ellen Gunther, member of the Alameda County Sierra Club. It's the last one! We can't get rid of it! If we do, then... then... uh... there'll be... you know... consequences... and stuff. I hope we show the same concern for removing the last of other things, like murderers.
The Daily Clog takes a view that shows that its staff hasn't spent a whole lot of time following University-City relations.
Of course there would have been a couple of ways to avoid all of this [controversy]. The university could have, during the planning stages, let the city know what it was doing. (Yeah right).
The university could have also asked for community input during planning stages. (Pleeeaasse)
The university will never do that. It didn't do that and now its plans for future renovations are going to be stalled. Great. Riiiight. And after talking with them, they'd say "Hey, sure, if you put it that way, we're all for helping the university out, and things will go smoother." It's a little disturbing that our news organization apparently believes this is the way the city treats the university, and that this backlash could have been avoided.
. . .
|
. . .
|
