Mr. Herbert, tear down this fence!

Bloomington is hands-down the most alluring, most beautiful of the IU campuses, and arguably in the top five of all state schools for campus beauty. As seasons change, so does the scenery on campus: innumerable flowers bloom during the spring, dense greenery comes out during the quiet summers, the autumn months are marked by thousands of leaves turning to gold, red and brown, and the forest-like atmosphere of the old campus makes winter feel like a Robert Frost poem.\nWith the turning of the seasons, IU welcomes new students and shares fond memories of departing friends. Yet one thing remains long after the seniors have moved on: the hideous Seventh Street scar that mars the natural beauty of our academia, a deep wound across the cheek of our Midwestern paradise.\nPortable aluminum buildings, tractor trailers abandoned and left for dead, and construction materials for a job never finished block Seventh Street next to the IU Auditorium, causing inconvenience and headaches for motorists and pedestrians. Originally, the equipment stored behind the rusted, chain-link fence was being used for construction, but administrators found that blocking off the street substantially cut down on campus traffic. Since the fall of 1997, the garbage has been left to corrode with no plans of removal.\nInstead it just sits there, forgotten, alone, dejected.\nBesides being by far the ugliest 300 feet of campus, it's also one of the busiest. The hundreds, if not thousands, of students who walk to and from the Herman B Wells library and the central neighborhood dorms are all too familiar with the narrow stretch of sidewalk. Bicyclists are often forced to dismount and walk their bikes through the deep crevasse, or else risk striking a pedestrian running around the corner hurrying to class.\nNow that work on the Lilly Library is completed, the excuse that the space is convenient for the University is no longer valid. There is ample space elsewhere on campus and in Bloomington for 18-wheelers and rusty metal pipes. Occasionally, there might be reason to build temporary shelter for equipment as maintenance is done, but there seems to be no logical explanation for housing the machinery where it is.\nYou know what would look better than the salvage yard IU built all those years ago? Anything. If campus traffic is the issue, then we propose a park -- a quiet place to sit and read or listen to music. What about a giant gilded statue of Herman Wells, or a whole row of those London-esque clocks? Heck, even concrete pylons would be a step up from that shanty town.\nHow did that famous speech about an oppressive, dispiriting wall go? \nEvery student here is a Hoosier, forced to look upon a scar. After all this time there stands before the entire campus one great and inescapable conclusion: Beauty leads to prosperity. President Adam Herbert, if you seek peace, if you seek prosperity for IU and Bloomington, if you seek liberalization: Come here to this gate! Mr. Herbert, open this gate! Mr. Herbert, tear down this fence!