UBC Reports | Vol. 47 | No. 07 | Apr. 5, 2001

Show environmental leadership, says reader

Editor:

I see that the "protectors" of the University Endowment Lands are about to bulldoze the last remaining stand of trees at UBC in order to build another huge ugly building, of which there are already too many.

Would it not make sense, especially for a so-called "institute of higher learning" to construct this building on the adjoining parking lot which has already been bulldozed and polluted with thousands of parked cars?

Very soon now the campus will look very much like the downtown area of Richmond, B.C. -- wall-to-wall blacktop.

And how is it that all university students appear to be able to roar around in the latest model car? UBC looks like the auto mall.

Not only do these students destroy the campus with their cars, they also destroy the communities that they drive through every day.

I trust that it is not taxpayer's dollars that are paying for these luxury items.

With the very large number of buses running into UBC until the early hours of the morning I am surprised at the very large number of cars parked in and around the campus.

One would think that our poor students would be scrimping and saving any way possible to pay for their tuition fees.

I would suggest that the Board of Governors of UBC have a duty to preserve and protect the UBC endowment lands and not to destroy them in the shortest possible time.

One only has to stand in Richmond overlooking the Fraser Valley and to see the dense black fog that smothers the valley each and every day to appreciate the price that we have to pay for progress.

The University of British Columbia should be a leader and an example to us and our children in the way that we treat our earth.

I regret to say that it is neither.

Colin W. Sinclaire

Richmond, B.C.