If this is a hoax, it's a very convincing one: Northwestern, my former university, is planning on paving over one of the nicest parts of campus -- a part of campus they feature prominantly in their recruiting literature -- because they expect they'll probably need to build on it at some point. In the meantime, they'll put up a parking lot. Feh. I almost want to believe it's a hoax, but there's evidence: press releases and a couple of stories in the Daily Northwestern, the campus newspaper.

This is ridiculous: The lakefill and lagoon make Northwestern such a beautiful place to be, and I'd hate to see it go just because the univeristy was too stupid to keep land in the actual town of Evanston. The campus is a big selling point for the University -- hell, even Newton was impressed. The lakefill adds a hell of a lot more to the day-to-day lives of the students and faculty than the damn football team, no matter how much they try to promote it.

It's also maddening that the university decided to do this without even talking to students, alumni, anyone else, even trying to make a case for why it should happen. We're reasonable people: If there's no other way to get the space the university needs, so be it. But just announcing "Hey, we're going to fill in and pave over a fair bit of the coolest part of campus, nothing to see here, move along" without any sort of warning is arrogant and suggests that they don't want to consider any options -- they're going to do what they're going to do, and to hell with what anyone else thinks. At least try to explain your reasoning to the NU community -- the students, faculty and alumni. How difficult is that? Grrr.

There's an online petition protesting the plan -- please sign it, especially if you have some connection to NU. If you usually donate to NU, you might want to let them know you're withholding your regular donation in disgust at their high-handed, authoritarian actions.

Or you could just write an impassioned screed on your blog. Whatever works.