I just had to write yet another thank-you to NIU; this time specifically to NIU’s grounds crew for making our campus more beautiful.

Thank you. Thank you for adding to our already beautiful campus.

Our campus, made-up of beautiful sites such as the beautiful, garbage-ridden, polluted creek that runs throughout the beautifully dangerous collapsing steam tunnels surrounded by snow fences near DuSable Hall.

And of course, one cannot forget the beautiful ravished decaying court, just north of Founders Memorial Library—and now in addition to the list, nearly a dozen, beautiful 25 to 50 inch diameter thrashed 75-year-old willow tree stumps at our East Lagoon. Beautiful. Just beautiful. Thank-you!

You, as the reader, may be pondering as to the reason why these “beautiful?” 75-year-old trees were cut down to create beautiful 75-year-old stumps.

Well, I will let NIU’s landscape architect, James (helping to beautify our campus) Murphy, answer that one.

As quoted in the Star’s Jan. 15 issue he stated, “they (the willows) were old, dirty and dangerous.”

Thank you James for replacing those old, dirty and dangerous trees (note that James failed to see these trees as beautiful) with new, clean, safe trees, and of course, those beautiful stumps.

James further described the reasoning behind having the trees cut down by saying that the new, clean and safe trees have a longer predicted longevity, as compared to the 75-year-old willows—that is, they live longer.

Good thinking James … 75-year-old “living” willow trees—kill them, so they can be replaced with new, clean, safe trees that live longer …

Thank-you to the NIU officials responsible for the brainchild to cut down those willows, thank you to the NIU grounds crew for cutting down those willows, and last, but surely not least, thank you to James Murphy for his reasoning behind the massacre.

Thank you to you all, it is actions like these that reassure me that, at least at NIU, the right people are in charge of making the right decisions about beautifying our campus.

Oh by the way, I am sure the willows, if they were still alive, would thank you too.

Donald R. Lucas

Graduate student

Psychology