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More trees near Harvard Lampoon hacked
By adamg on Fri, 11/30/2007 - 8:51am
The damage was so severe the city had to just dig up what was left and cart the damaged trees away, the Crimson reports:
Cambridge's forestry division came and removed three Japanese maples and a crabapple that could not have been saved.
The city has no suspects in this case. The privileged class who write the Lampoon have been hacking away at city trees near their headquarters for a couple decades. Last month, a Lampoon editor was arrested while allegedly cutting down trees with a handsaw.
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Comments
Punk-ass college kids, but with a nasty twist
I was a Harvard undergrad not so long ago, so a) I feel I'm allowed to rant about them without sounding all sour-grapes, and b) I know whereof I speak.
When I read stories like this, I really wish Harvard undergrads would stick to, you know, NORMAL punk-ass college kid things, like getting drunk and making noise. Yeah, having a big party on your block is incredibly annoying... but in most cases, the neighborhood and community surrounding campus is in the students' blind spot rather than in their crosshairs. Being rowdy and blasting music doesn't deliver the same calculated "fuck you" as chopping down trees planted by the city.
Legacy Admissions
Perhaps these closet lumberjacks are the wealthy scions of illustrious alumni who didn't have to score over "barely breathing" in order to get in?
They can't keep up with the workload, so they have to do something with their time ...
Dad
You aren't answering your phones, but can you shut this site down?
Seriously?
At some point Cambridge has to become the one to realize it's a stupid money and manpower drain to put a tree there.
I'm sure the city planners are all stern-faced and full of "we do not acquiesce to tree terrorists" but just don't be stubborn to the point of stupid. It's just a traffic island and it's just aesthetics. Neither are worth the continual effort and nonsense that both groups butting heads on this are putting into it.
Alternatively
Alternatively, perhaps the city should put the onus on Harvard to either re-plant the trees themselves or charge Harvard for the cost of re-planting the trees. This again seems to be one of those - "who best to regulate the behavior of the students than then university" issues.
Idea for MIT Hack
Plant a tree that isn't a tree - and delivers a mild but highly unpleasant shock when sawed at.
MIT Hack
They could also saw the Lampoon headquarters in half.
Paint the Lampoon
We could just paint the Lampoon Headquarters green so that it resembles a tree on each side. Any one up for paintball guns an dawn?
Lorax costume optional?
Lorax costume optional?
Trees are necessary and beautiful.
Therefore, trees serve a triple function: they're beautiful, they provide shade, and they reduce air pollution.
yeah but have any of you
yeah but have any of you seen the "design" for this triangle? I'm a bike-riding, T pass buying, zipcarring, north end hovel-dwelling urbanophile, but really, it was a sad and pathetic little fenced off lawnlet worthy of holdy the sign at the entryway to some suburban "Oakdalebrook Foresthillmeadows" subdivision. The 3 gallons of runoff and handfull of air pollutants filtered by this thing weren't worth the visual blight or the traffic funneling it would create.
I'll buy these kids a chainsaw if it means that this stays street. I won't even get into the fact that it would block the facade of one of the true highlights of local design, and one of the "masterpieces" of the Roky Erikson of architecture-- Edmund Wheelwright.
Cambridge ought to fix its pathetically undermaintained Charles River footpath with this money.
Fix all of 2 square feet of
Fix all of 2 square feet of the footpath with the cost of 3 trees? How about Harvard, with its billions of endowment, fix the footpath as a gesture of goodwill? They ought to contribute to the city of Cambridge in some manner, in lieu of paying taxes.
the cost of granite curbs,
the cost of granite curbs, excavation, tearing out the the street, top soil, and all associated costs for labor, design, engineering, surveying, moving utilities, paying police overtime to stand next to the construction site for 3 months, etc., and yes, the 3 trees, would buy a hell of a lot of asphalt.
the semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization
I think that we have now heard from someone at the Lampoon — the semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine. A telltale fact is that Edmund Wheelwright, a Roxbury native, designed the Lampoon Building. It seems like they do not want anything blocking the view of their building. Perhaps we should not stop at eliminating trees......
I'm not a Lampooner. Just a
I'm not a Lampooner. Just a graduate student with an interest in local architecture. The fact that I don't live in Cambridge should have been telltale that I'm not an undergrad.
Two additional budget items
Web cam
remote control pellet gun or tear gas
Priceless!
Very bizarre
If it wasn't too excusing of the Lampooners, I'd wonder why Cambridge keeps wasting money planting trees in a place they are going to get vandalized. Nevertheless, am I the only one who doesn't understand where this tree is being planted. I've seen the Lampoon castle and I don't recall there being a traffic island anywhere nearby. I've looked on the various map/spy sites and still can't figure what they are talking about unless the trees are a pretty good distance from the building.
Yep
This isn't like in the 1990s when Al Vellucci kept having a tree planted right in front of the stupid building. Lampooners apparently think it's fun to cut down trees a couple blocks away now.
Great camera work by the Crimson
Really? A few blocks? Nice camera, then.
Location of tree
The traffic island is new.
The traffic island is new. It's sort of a mini-park, really more than a traffic island. It was installed within the past year as part of the various Harvard Square street and sidewalk work.
Ah
Well, that explains it, I guess. It is a weirdly broad intersection there.
I do wonder, though, what sense does it make to plant a bunch of trees on a traffic island. I mean, its out in the middle of the street. Forget about seeing the castle, don't we want clean sight lines while driving?
Maybe the can compramise with some nice shrubbery.
Sense?
We're talking about a state where one state agency puts up a brand new directional sign at a complicated intersection (Charles Circle) and another state agency promptly plants trees in front of it.
elite spoiled brats
Harvard can't be that difficult if these elite spoiled brats have this much time on their hands... at least they could cleverly replant the 'offending' trees elsewhere.
But...but...
Harvard, like the rest of Cambridge, is full of champagne socialists, so I am wondering why on earth Harvard Lampooners are cutting down TREES!? I mean, isn't that considered a very wicked thing to do? Worse than eating veal and goose liver pate? The king of Canadian champagne socialists, Bob Rae, chained himself to a tree or something to prevent it from being chopped down. Actually, that was in vogue for a while: lefty politicians getting chucked in the slammer for protecting trees. So the next time the city puts out trees, I suggest that members of the Harvard Democrats have a rotating tree guard.
Back in my day
The Lampoon people tended to lean further right than the average Harvard student. Unconventional -- but in a creepy, right-wing snotty sort of way. Not much trace of leftism. Seems things haven't changed much over the decades.
Mainly they were into getting very, very drunk (legal back then) and smashing things up.
Yeah, as recently as 2000
Yeah, as recently as 2000 they were still drunken douchebags for the most part, just the types to think cutting down city-owned trees is hysterical.
champagne socialists?
Champagne socialists... pretty little speech that you've labored over, but a bit over the top, don't you think?
Although I suppose Harvard Lampoon might have a sense of humour
Oh boo hoo hoo, did the wicked foreign woman hurt wittle-ums feelings? Me and my little Canadian universal health care card is so sorry. What do I know? All our best universities are funded by the government, not by $35,000 tuitions and on the backs of 18 year old football players.
Well, that makes no sense,
Well, that makes no sense, but thanks for playing!
Not funded by football, believe me
Actually, Harvard is mostly funded by its 30 billion dollar endowment. Tuition is obscenely high, but they're quite good about financial aid. It's one of the few things about Harvard that I can't complain about.
Ha, so so many of my
Ha, so so many of my classmates at Harvard are canadians.... apparently its worth paying TWO tuitions for, since they're still taxpaying Canadians and are ineligble for aid here. Some deal!
Not all wizards are good, Harry
Well, in that case, they're probably heavier into the champagne than they are into the socialism. Ask them how they feel about having to pay for MA medical insurance.
College students and insurance
Didn't most colleges in Mass. require students to get health insurance long before the current law? In which case, what would Lampoon editors care?
If you want to call it insurance ...
Basically, it is shit passing for fertillizer. It was required, but that just meant that universities could contract with charletons for zero coverage "polices" that wouldn't cover anything much, and nothing at all if you had a preexisting condition, like, maybe sneezing once in the past year.
I couldn't get coverage for my asthma medications. My kids would have been prohibitively expensive to cover. My husband wouldn't have been covered for anything due to preexistings - his regular exams, lab work, meds would all be out-of-pocket (and would have been if HE were the student). In other words, it was garbage and useless, and a manditory drain on finances. I'm sure it made the smug idiots who drafted the law without regard for minimum coverage levels feel better about themselves, though. Them and their crony friends who get the automatic payments.
I wrote my own grant and controlled the money. I had completed most of my coursework. Thus I became a research associate with a relatively low salary, but coverage for up to 12 credits of coursework each term, instead of a graduate student who prayed daily that nobody ever got sick and worried herself sick over mounting bills for the rest of her family. That meant when I developed pneumonia twice in the next year, related to asthma recurrences caused by flooding issues in my office suite that required professional biohazard remediation, I had real grownup human being coverage and didn't have to fight for comp (which students can't get either).
Otherwise, I'd be atlantic whitefish.
Cry me a prescription
All universities have to give you the option to find healthcare on your own and waive their option. It's only mandatory if you don't provide evidence of healthcare coverage from another source.
Maybe when you were in the doctor's chair for pneumonia, you should have also asked for something to settle the histrionics.
Must be nice ...
to still be nursing at the parental teat, eh?
That "arrange your own insurance" trick only works if you are still living in mommy's basement or covered by parental insurance - in other words, still a tax deduction. Anybody over 20 and many under will have a lot of problems pulling that trick if they can't be on their parent's policy, because insurers don't write many individual policies and they are not affordable. Yeah, I managed that when I was 16. Doesn't get you far when you are 35 and your job is being a graduate student. The system is an utter farce if you are over 22.
Doctor's chair? You are precious little innocent anon, aren't you? I hope you never get to enjoy the wonders of a work-related illness or injury someday without proper insurance, but the odds of that are kind of slim. Fortunately, I was clever enough to insulate myself from that horror.
Somehow, someday, you will get the fine chance to experience reality first hand and find out that being old enough to drink doesn't mean being old enough to know everything or even anything. Being able to use words like "histrionics" ain't the same as being grown up and having been around the block a few times.
What's really nice
What's really nice is to be so assumptive that you can live in a world where everyone else must be 18 and you are the burly elder whose life experiences total more than anyone else's combined. For there you can sit with wisdom greater than any other and hand down judgment built on your vast knowledge of life, the universe, and everything. For in your own little place, there is no chance that an anonymous commenter might be in the insurance trade and over the age of 50, specializing in helping non-dependent students get insurance for very reasonable prices in the messed up over-regulated state of MA. No, they must still be at the "parental teat" because it makes it easier to toss your ad hominem attacks pretending that in your world you are the wiser and more studied person...and not just a fool who found their own harder way through life because they just weren't willing to accept the advice of others who actually do know better.
But, hey, I bet your happy there in that little reality anyways...so at least you have that going for you.
Ok, now we are OT
...and it is my fault, but I meant that the Canadians paying Harvard tuition for their kids (as well as taxes so that most Canadian kids can go to a good university) would be a tad annoyed to know that they have to (by law) pay MA medical insurance when they also pay taxes so that all Canadians can get affordable (and usually free) health care. (See comment above mine re: Canadians at Harvard.)
I sure hate paying MA health insurance. When I get sick, I go home to Canada anyway.
What is a champagne socialist?
and how does he or she differ from a beer, wine, or absinthe socialist?
Smaller bubbles
I think
Limosine Liberal
Isn't it like a limosine liberal? A friend of mine from Cleveland often sprinkles that one in while calling me an arrogant east-coaster. I think its supposed to mean that I like to spout off my "liberal" views on social economics while not worrying about their real impact because I am not "a working man" and do not hold, or pretend to hold like he does, a degree in economics. Its either that or my weekly Champagne Distributors and Livery Drivers for Socialism meeting.
Unfortunately,
No matter how many times we connoisseurs of Märx & Chandon have asked The Help to deal with the pesky problem of tree-cutting individuals who have so cunningly infiltrated our elite cabal of eco-conscious royals, they fail us again and again.