Protesters gathered on the BrickyardFriday in an attempt to persuade the attorney general to help them halt the sale of the Hofmann Forest.
About 20 protestors, most of whom are students, voiced their displeasure regarding how N.C. State administrators are handling the sale of the sale.
However, this time the protest emphasized how Attorney General Roy Cooper’s office could help their case.
“Once the attorney general sees how we’ve been lied to about this issue, I think he’ll be on our side,” said Ron Sutherland, a conservation scientist for Wildlands Network who has lead the charge against the sale.
According to Jacob Rutz, a senior in plant and soil sciences at N.C. State and one of the protest’s organizers, students must get involved to successfully block the sale.
“The student body is a part of the larger N.C. State family, and it’s our duty as part of that family to let everyone know that selling the forest to someone who doesn’t want to maintain and preserve the environment completely contradicts N.C. State’s commitment to sustainability,” Rutz said.
Rutz also said students and alumni must “have a strong say in how the University conducts itself,” when united.
“We want to let Cooper that know that he can’t defend the University in an illegal act without it having severe consequences,” Rutz said. “I think it’s up to us to hold public officials accountable and to put the pressure on when they’re in the wrong. If he ever wants to run for any sort of office in the future, we’ll be letting people know that he helped sell the largest University-owned forest in the world.”
Sutherland said the protestors are already well aware of Hofmann Forest LLC’s plans to develop the forest.
“The buyers of Hofmann Forest are sitting around a prospectus saying they’re basically going to turn the forest into cornfields,” Sutherland said, referring to a prospectus released in December that revealed the buyer’s intentions to develop the forest into cornfields and residential property.
However, University officials said that the prospective buyer of the forest, Hofmann Forest LLC, created the document simply to highlight potential uses of the land.
“The buyer confirmed there are ‘no plans to develop the property into a large commercial and residential community,’” said Brad Bohlander, associate vice chancellor for University Communications and chief communications officer at N.C. State, in a November press release.
Bohlander also said the Hofmann Forest is zoned for conservation uses and any changes to accommodate such development would require a county public approval process.
Activists have filed a lawsuit in an attempt to stop the sale on the basis that it violates the State Environmental Policy Act. According to the plaintiffs, the Hofmann Forest must undergo an inspection to assess the environmental damages that could occur if the sale goes through.
Their reasoning states that the forest is state land and therefore must undergo a review under SEPA. However, a Wake County Superior Court judge dismissed the case in December and said SEPA doesn’t apply to the sale.
According to Sutherland, those against the sale are now turning to Cooper due to the current lawsuit’s status and because they’ve “given up on Chancellor Randy Woodson being reasonable about the sale.”
About half of the protestors marched to Cooper’s office in downtown Raleigh to continue the demonstration after the on-campus protest.
Sutherland said about 1,600 people have signed a petition to stop the Hofmann Forest sale.
Rutz said he’s organizing a street theater performance in the near future that will tell the story of the Hofmann Forest sale.
“The history of the sale is a long and convoluted story, and it’s hard to explain it all at a protest, so we want to help explain that story to the student body in a more comprehensive way,” Rutz said.
