Today is an important milestone in advocacy for the UBC Farm, which is under threat of development to enrich UBC’s endowment. The petition that the Friends of the Farm have been circulating over the past number of weeks (you can see the online version here), has more than 15000 signatures and will be presented to President Toope and VP External and Community Relations Stephen Owen later today, accompanied by some freshly baked pumpkin pies.
Whether this stack of signatures and statements will be enough to sway them from the three-option consultation rubrick being peddled by the Campus and Communiy Planning office as the current stage of the Campus Plan process is yet to be revealed. Let’s hope they are. The options currently on the table with regards to the Farm (which were asstutely described by the SDS in a recent Ubyssey column as a “shit sandwich”) are completely unnacceptable. Like I said in my statment on the petition, it’s time President Toope took some cues from UBC’s PR team and actually practiced some foresight. Here’s hoping both Stephens do some serious thinking about what sustainibility, community, and foresight really mean while they munch their pie and wade through the knee-high pile of signatures.