TO THE EDITOR:
How ironic that a month after the UNC Board of Trustees authorized the Rams Club’s $70 million destruction/expansion of Kenan Stadium, “recent legislation cut in-state funding for out-of-state scholarship student-athletes at all 16 UNC-system universities, with UNC bearing the brunt of these cuts” landed at the door of the Rams Club (“Rams Club faces state budget cuts,” June 30).
While it is impossible to save the noble trees at the east end of the stadium surrounding Kenan Field house, it was at least hoped that administrators would have foreseen the wisdom in retaining the timber rights for marketing these doomed specimen oaks and pines through the General Alumni Association with the proceeds funding campus landscaping.
A Historic Timber Commission that could manage the disposal and distribution of timber from significant trees that are vanishing from the historic campus — at an alarming rate in recent years — is an idea that always dies when it falls down to the staff level where someone could actually take responsibility for something more than hauling off these trees to the wood pile.
How much money could be raised for athletic scholarships if this timber were marketed properly? I am certain the Council of State would grant the board a waver for such fundraising with “state property” rather than allow it to be discarded and handed over to the building contractors as is the current practice.
Since the boosters will now have to pony up more money to fund out-of-state athletes, it would seem that those trees, which once gave Kenan Stadium the title of “College Football’s Most Beautiful Setting” could offer their final gift from green leaves to greenbacks.
F. Marion Redd ’67
Hillsborough
