Western Front - 2008 June 6

              NEWS
Gay marriage
legalized in California
» page 6
ART&LIFE
When passing Wilson
Library, Look Up!
» page 8
OPINION
Goodbye Western.
Thanks RON PAUL.
» page 12
SPORTS
Staci Reynolds: Female
Athlete of the quarter
» page 14 j
Friday, June 6,2008
THE WESTERN FRONT
AN INDEPENDENT STUDENT NEWSPAPER SERVING WESTERN WASHINGTON UNIVERSITY SINCE 1970.
Issue 18 I Vol. 160 westernfrontonIine.net
Slackening a danger to Western trees
'••: '""'•'•-••:.•"•" -.;-'• :. ' • . "•. •'••''"--, above photos by Michael Leese THE WESTERN FRONT
' • • . ; • V". " ' '"••.'••.' - -^ :. left photo by KathrynBachen THE WESTERN FRONT
LEFT: A slackliner practices his balance in front of the Science, Mathematics and Technology Education (SMATE) building Spring 2007. RIGHT:
The tension of the slacklines is causing damage to the bark of the trees outside the SMATE building. If the trees lose too much bark, they could be
exposed to disease, causing them to die.
Western's head gardener concerned trees on campus have been
Tela Crane
THE WESTERN FRONT
Slacklining, a balance
sport, is growing in popular­ity
around. Western's campus
but may be causing irreversible
damage to the trees used as an­chor
points.
The sport is similar to tight­rope
walking in that it involves
walking across a rope suspend­ed
in the air. Unlike a tightrope,
the rope is not stretched tight-it
moves and bounces as people
walk across it, said- Western
senior Kyle Breakey, who has
been slacklining for two and a
half years.
The line is usually stretched
between two trees and can cause
damage to the tree's bark, said
Western head gardener Randy
Godfrey said.
"The wear and tear of the
rope around the. trunks is dam­aging
the bark," Godfrey said.
"The trees could have to be re­placed
if they die."
Godfrey said he has no­ticed
a few specific trees on
the lawn between the Science,
Mathematics and Technology
Education (SMATE) building
and Carver Gym that have been,
damaged by slacklining.
So far, no trees have been
removed, but Godfrey said some
of the trees are in bad shape, es­pecially
ari Empress Tree, which
is an exotic tree from China that
is not very strong.
Vivienne Blythe, a camp
and climbing specialist at REI,
said slacklining can damage
irreparably damaged
trees because of the pressure of
the rope around the tree trunk.
"Even though it's called
slacklining, there is still ten­sion
on the rope across the tree
trunk," Blythe said. "You get
a 180-pound person'up on that
line, and it can cause a lot of.
pressure on the tree."
Part of the problem is the
trees are not very, big and don't
have thick enough bark to stand
up to the wear and tear of the
see SLACKLINING page 5 •
Another
year come
and gone
Marie Biondolillo
THE WESTERN FRONT
•Western's 2007-08 school
year was packed with events that
will change the university for­ever.
The school year kicked off
with Western's first female presi­dent,
Karen Morse, announcing
her retirement and ended with
the Western faculty union and
Western administration reaching
a tentative agreement on the fac­ulty
union's first contract after 16
months of negotiations.
This year, Western contin­ued
work on the Academic In­structional
Center, the largest
rconstruction project-in Western
histoiy, collaborated with the
Port of Bellingham on plans for
the development of Bellingham's
waterfront and recruited West­ern's
13th president, University
of Wisconsin-Green Bay Chan­cellor
Bruce Shepard.
Western professors achieved
research breakthroughs and re­ceived
grants, and a record num­ber
of Western students voted in
February's Democratic caucus
for the presidential nominee.
Western library employee Julie
Fitzgerald helped authorities ar­rest
James L. Brubaker in con­nection
with more than 100 book
and document thefts from public
and university libraries.
"This was definitely an un­usual
year," said Western faculty
see LOOKING BACK page 4 •
Anthropology professor fights for return of tribal land
Amanda Winters
THE WESTERN FRONT
Tribal rights to have a say
in building development on their
traditional lands is at stake in
what may lead to a courtroom
battle for the Confederated Tribes
of Grand Ronde in Oregon.
Western anthropology pro­fessor
Daniel Boxberger has been
working for the past three years
to help the tribes prove their his­torical
right to have a say in what
happens to the land.
"The government forced
them to cede the lands, so they
could give them to the settlers
and marched all of these assort­ed
bands and tribes to what was
then set up as the Grand Ronde
reservation," said Siobhan Tay­lor,
public affairs director of the
Grand Ronde. "At that time there
were about 27 different tribes and
bands that ended up on the Grand
Ronde reservation."
Taylor said the original res­ervation
was 65,000 acres and the
present-day reservation, west of
Salem, Ore., is 10,000 acres. She
said the ceded lands stretch from
the Northern-California border,
up through the Willamette Valley
out to the coast and up both sides
of the Columbia to the Cascade
Locks area.
"These are lands that, by
treaty, the tribes signed over to
the United States," Boxberger
said. "Many people have the mis­conception
the reservations were
given to the Indians by treaty, but
traditionally they held a certain
amount of land, and by treaty,
they ceded that to the government
and retained just the reservation
lands."
Boxberger said the tribe was
terminated by the U.S. govern­ment
in 1954 as part of the In­dian
Termination Act. But after
spending decades appealing to
the courts for federal recognition
the tribe was reinstated in 1983.
Taylor said while the tribe was
fighting in court for reinstatement
they were being left out of treaty
negotiation because they weren't
federally recognized.
"He's helping us to say that
even though the tribe was termi­nated,
we still had ongoing tribal
members living in these areas, we
still use these lands and we have
an unbroken tie to these areas,"
Taylor said. "So we should be a
tribe that is included in negotia­tions
on environmental issues and
fishing and hunting."
see LAND RIGHTS page 3 •