On Tuesday evening Chancellor Randy Woodson met with the editorial board of the Technician, per his request, to discuss the sale of the Hofmann Forest or rather the editorial we had written about it the night before. We were grateful for the opportunity.
“I’m going to walk through with you some of the issues, and portraying in the editorial this morning that there has been deceit and lies is completely inaccurate,” Woodson said, wasting no time to explain the purpose of his visit.
After speaking with Woodson, the editorial board of the Technician would like to apologize to the chancellor for the staff editorial titled “The Hofmann Forest fiasco: Administration, make this right.”
In our editorial, we stated that we felt as though we had been lied to by the administration. However, Woodson made it clear to us that he has, in fact, remained honest and unwavering in his position regarding the sale of the forest.
We said that Woodson said the land would be preserved, and we made it seem as though he was concerned about the conservation of the forest. We were wrong, and for that we are sorry.
“We are not the Department of Conservation,” Woodson told The News & Observer on July 10, in response to a demonstration during which protesters gathered outside of a board of trustees meeting in opposition to the sale.
This was more than four months before the true motives of Hofmann Forest LLC came into question with the release of the prospectus; however, true to previous statement, Woodson expressed his indifference regarding the future of the forest in our meeting.
“I’m going to be real honest with you here. I always am,” Woodson said. “We can’t control everything that happens to the land after we sell it, but we could control the way it was sold, and finding a buyer that had the intent to manage it in a way consistent with the way it’s managed now … Twenty years down the road, I can’t predict what will be happening there and, candidly, if we restrict with covenants the way a person used it in perpetuity, no one would buy it.”
Woodson discussed the University’s long history of exploiting the Hofmann Forest in the interest of maximizing profits.
“If you read the history of this property, we’ve had periods where we explored for oil on the property, where we dug for coal, where we just basically did anything that made sense to generate income to support the college,” Woodson said. “This property has always been about generating resources for the college.”
Woodson dispelled our misguided belief that the forest is indeed a forest and told us about how the land had been nothing more than a swamp when the Natural Resources Foundation (then called the North Carolina Forestry Foundation Inc.) acquired it. He explained how the land was dynamited to drain the swamp and how it was turned into a “tree plantation.”
“If you were thinking about this as a nature conservancy, this nature has been manipulated for a long time,” Woodson said.
Woodson made clear the advantages of maintaining the status quo if it helps to turn a quick profit.
So to you, Chancellor Woodson, we apologize. We apologize for not doing the research we should’ve to realize that the conservation of the Hofmann Forest was never a priority for you.
