Copyright © 1999 NLThomas
All Rights Reserved

This Earth Day (April 22), Citizens for a Pedestrian-Friendly Campus (CPFC) will host a peaceful march on the campus of UT-Knoxville to protest the proposed $21 million four-lane highway that TDOT, Governor Sundquist, and the UT Board of Trustees want to slap down the middle of the UTK campus.

The details of this campaign may be found on the web, along with TDOT's graphic of this monster bridge. (See related URL at the end of this article.)

Briefly, it is environmentally unsustainable. It is a waste of taxpayer money. It poses a threat to a cultural treasure (the Native American burial mound), and it ignores the safety of pedestrians. It was planned with no public input. It violates UT's own $400,000 Master Plan. It also threatens the Third Creek Greenway. Finally, it will ruin the pastoral atmosphere of the ag campus.

Our group supports the bike/pedestrian connector in the Master Plan. Other groups prefer no connector. This march is for all those people -- everyone who has been ignored in this planning process.

To date, approximately 1,500 petitioners and 15 campus and community groups (including the Faculty Senate, Graduate Student Association, and the Student Government Association) have publicly voiced their opposition to this four-lane. However, TDOT, Sundquist, and UT continue to thumb their noses to public opinion. Construction is slated to start at the end of this year or the beginning of 2000. We need your help to stop this thing! We need to make a statement in numbers!

We invite you to join us this Earth Day for a pleasant walk in the company of people who believe in grassroots democracy. We are not willing to sit idly by and allow organizations and politicians to further their private agendas through back-room political deals at the expense of the collective good.

This "March for a Common Sense Connector" will begin at 12:10 p.m. April 22 at the University Center Plaza on the campus of UT-Knoxville with a few words from invited speakers. At 12:25 p.m., we will proceed down the sidewalk to Neyland Drive; take the greenway to the agriculture campus. There, we'll hear from a few other invited speakers. (The walk will take about an hour. Free shuttle buses are available for the ride back to the main campus.) Please call if you need more details!

The rain date is, Thursday April 29.