Near the middle of our campus (CNU), by one of the main paths, there's a big tree. It has a lot of branches low down and it can comfortably hold a whole group of people. There are often people out there, reading or having conversations, and there's even a "tree people" subculture, barefooted frisbee-playing tie-dyed tree hippies. Everyone loves the tree.

So my roommate and I went out one night and hung a sign from the tree:



It reads:

SAVE THE TREE!
Don't let them cut it down!

A little drainage trouble
shouldn't cause the loss
of one of CNU's most beloved
landmarks


There are, naturally, no plans to cut down the tree.

The sign hung there for a few days (we put it slightly out of reach of the average person). Eventually, a fellow hacker, who knew nothing of my scheme, actually went to the proper authorities (after taking the above picture). I had hoped they'd be hard to find, but he is the tenacious type. He found the administration and the grounds people united in defense of the tree. The sign was removed by staff shortly afterward, but the confusion remained.

The drainage thing is actually vaguely plausible. There's always water pooling there and they keep digging new trenches near the tree to get water to flow right. But of course they're not gonna cut down the tree over it --it would probably make the problem worse.

I sat down at lunch today with some girls I didn't know, and the topic of conversation was "Did you hear they're going to cut down the tree? We won't let them." I was so proud.