I'm writing to express my concern over what appears to be a growing "movement" on campus. It seems that at night a small group of environmentalists are going around the parking lots and placing bumper stickers on the tailgates of SUVs that say "I'm changing the climate, ask me how!" This idea originates from a website that promotes this activity as a way of protesting what they perceive to be an environmental threat.

This action, however, is not the act of civil disobedience that this site makes it out to be. It is vandalism and nothing more. I fully support people's right to protest whatever they feel like, but nobody has the right to inflict damage upon others property just because they disagree with their choice of transportation. And for the record, I am not just a peeved victim; my SUV remains to be tagged.

This anti-SUV sticker movement is just one of many within the environmentalist community that is troublesome to myself as well as many others (including, apparently, the FBI) as extremism is becoming more and more commonplace. Acts of vandalism, property destruction and even violence (an example of which is tree-spiking which can injure or even kill loggers who are just trying to do their jobs) are not only preached, but carried out by organizations such as Earth First and the Animal Liberation Front (who burned down that multi-million dollar ski lodge in Aspen a few years ago). While these eco-terrorist groups remain on the fringe, some of their ideas and methods are starting to go mainstream.

So what I ask of these "taggers" is that, instead of going to radical and destructive methods of protest, you simply make your positions known in a more civilized manner. I think you'll find that if you open up a discussion on the matter and allow for some good debate, people will be less likely to dismiss your group and its ideas as the whims of a bunch of tree-huggers (believe me, that is pretty much what all owners of the defiled SUVs think now). I also ask that if you insist on continuing "tagging" SUVs, please put the stickers on the bumpers, and not the paint. They are easier to remove and do less damage there. Thank you.

Brian Malin

junior

O'Neill Hall

Nov. 19, 2000

• Criticizing Gore's tactics
  
• Quote of the Day
  
• Defending the Electoral College
  
• Learning from the Holocaust
  
• Assessing protest methods