Students and faculty rally for Cistern trees

Students and faculty gathered for a rally in the Cistern on Feb. 12 to persuade the administration to include students and faculty in the decision to cut down four Magnolia trees framing Randolph Hall.
Biology professor Dr. Phillip Dustan is advocating for transparency in administrative decisions like cutting down campus trees.
A petition is circulating to ask President P. George Benson to allow the entire college to participate in an open forum on the tree issue.
“People can dismiss e-mails, but it’s hard to dismiss signatures,” Dustan said. “The petition is arguing for an open forum on the trees and for the fact that there is a tremendous amount of expertise on campus that should be included in these decisions.” 
Dustan wants the voices of students and faculty, not just the administration, to be seriously considered in this decision.
“It’s our campus. It’s not just their campus,” Dustan said. “It’s the place that we come to learn and that we come to teach, and those guys are just here to work for us.”
Students attended the rally for a variety of reasons.
“I’m here to promote better communication between administration and students instead of just letting them do whatever they please,” junior Jonathan Watson said.
Junior Matt Gregory was interested in protecting the indigenous trees.
“It’s just the principle of having more organic growth on campus,” Gregory said.
Gregory also feels that the administration should not be able to make this kind of decision without student and faculty input.
“There’s something more important about this than just cutting down trees,” Gregory said. “It’s like a microcosm for government.”
Senior Fritz Stine is concerned that the administration decided to cut down the Magnolia trees without discussing it with the community and planning to do it over spring break, he said.
“It just seems shady, even if that wasn’t their intention,” said Stine.
Freshman biology student Ephraim Elston attended for the trees.
“We don’t want to see them go down,” Elston said. “You can always fix a building but it takes a long time to plant a tree and see it grow.”
Dustan’s goal is to get students and faculty involved in decisions about their campus, he said in his speech at the rally. He advocated for transparency in administrative decisions.
C of C graduate student and C of C alumnus Drew Lamb grew up in Charleston and wants to protect the trees for the image of the College and the city, he said.
“I have a real hope that we can slow this down, have an educational experience about this, learn from it, and then decide as a group in a community that involved students, faculty, and the administration’s opinion and come to a resolution that is somewhere in the middle,” Lamb said.
Facilities planning vice president Monica Scott organized an open forum and press conference at 9 a.m. Fed. 12.
Lamb heard about the forum from faculty and was the only student to attend the forum, he said.
“It was a chance for education to occur, and students just weren’t involved in it,” Lamb said. “It’s rather unfortunate that students are actively being excluded from this conversation.”
Other students like senior Will Lindsey did not attend because they did not know the forum was happening.
“I was in no way was contacted or had any access to the press conference this morning,” Lindsey said. “Had I known about it I would have been there to express my opinion on the matter.”
Scott sent an e-mail on the faculty listserv informing faculty and staff about the forum, executive vice president of business affairs Victor Wilson said.
Wilson received the e-mail on the listserv but was not told to pass it on to students, he said.
Neither Wilson nor anyone in the student affairs office received any request to forward this particular e-mail to students, Wilson said.
“Students didn’t know because no one asked me to send the information,” said Wilson.
Scott was not available for comment on Feb. 12.