(Written by kencraw)

Being out of town when the action went down, I won’t try to recap what happened. (OK, a quick recap: All trees but one came down by Saturday and the tree sitters stayed in their lone remaining tree until Tuesday when the University started building scaffolding until it reached the tree-sitters and the inevitable was clear and they came down after getting a couple of minor “concessions”.)

A couple of comments though:

1. The scaffolding was an awesome way to go. It ensured safety to a degree that I didn’t think was possible. But when there is a large platform 5 feet below the tree-sitters platform, it’s pretty clear that the tree-sitters would have come down safely if they hadn’t surrendered. Way to go University for doing their research and finding the best way to extract the tree-sitters.

2. These “concessions” are a bit worrisome. I’ve read a bunch about it, and it might entirely be spin from the tree-sitters, but if the University made any concessions no matter how small, it was too big. Promising to “involve the community in future land use issues” is an implicit admission that they didn’t “involve the community” in past decisions. Which is down-right ridiculous. The only side that has been willing to compromise is the University. They made all kinds of concessions throughout this process and in the end ZERO concessions where made by the tree-sitters until it was blatently obvious they had both lost and they had 10 minutes left before being easily yet forcibly removed from the trees.

I’m sorry, ZERO CONCESSIONS is the right way to go here. Don’t give them any encouragement for the future. Even if they didn’t gain anything here, if they BELIEVE they did, it will embolden them in the future to continue to pull stupid pranks/protests like this in the future. It is absolutely critical they realize that they completely wasted two years of their lives without gaining a single thing. It’s the only way they and their successors will realize how stupid it is to protest like this.

But overall, today is a day to celebrate. The SAHPC is in progress and completely unhindered at this point. They can construct away and make progress as fast as they can. That is enough to be joyous about.

GO BEARS!