Last Friday, the sidewalks along DePauw University's new entryway on Anderson Street were unveiled, the fences came down, and the passageway from North Quad to Beta Theta Pi fraternity was open. By the following Monday, one tree lining the sidewalk lost a limb.
While this particular tree was only trimmed, last fall a number of trees on Burkhart Walk were damaged, one of which had to be replaced. Rob Harper, the assistant director of Facilities at DePauw, said this is definitely the work of vandalism, and that this sort of thing is common.
"We see this, unfortunately, a lot of the time," Harper said. "On Burkhart, we've had some issues with broken branches and such - it's typical."
An anonmymous alumn donated the 45 new trees along Anderson Street, according to President Brian Casey.
Also typical is that events such as these tend to occur on Friday and Saturday nights.
"If you were to come out here on a Saturday or Sunday morning and just see the path of destruction that can sometimes occur, you would wonder why that exists," Angie Nally, director of Public Safety said. "If someone's unhappy with DePauw, or they just think it's funny, or they really don't like flowers and trees."
Nally is also upset that the vandals chose to focus on this particular part of campus.
"We've been waiting months for this beautiful entryway to DePauw to open up and really highlight this amazing place," Nally said. "And then there are people who are tearing the limbs off the trees."
Though upset about the most recent example of damage to campus property, Nally is more worried that vandalism here at DePauw is becoming a very prominent problem.
"There's a real culture that at the end of the night on your way home you've got to rip something up - the only way that's going to change is if our students think that's not okay," she said.
Both Casey and Nally brought up the way DePauw's campus joined together in outrage against the recent vandalism done to the campus by Wabash students, and questions why we don't have that same reaction to in-house vandalism.
"We are seeing our community destroying our own property," Nally said. "I think that we should be equally appalled that a little elm tree on the new path of Anderson St., that's meant to highlight your higher education institution, is damaged."
Harper agreed with Nally and said the campus is a part of what attracts students to DePauw.
"[The landscape] is part of the campus here," Harper said. "It's part of what people see and what makes them want to come to DePauw. It's very unfortunate that things like this happen."
Freshman Grace Flickinger said that she, for one, is most definitely concerned about the vandalism taking place on campus.
"I just think it's very disrespectful that people would treat our school environment like this," Flickinger said. "It also kind of shows how some kids are immature and don't know how to act. People should know how to act and be responsible. When things like this happen, it's kind of embarrassing."
Nally encouraged more students to step forward. Though she is wary of using "lecture verbage," she does believe that we should all work together to respect our campus. She encourages students to utilize the "Silent Witness" feature of Public Safety's page on the DePauw website.
"This is something that all of you, as students, should be worried about," Nally said.
- Ellen Kobe contributed to this article.