Anti‑G.E. Trees Group Censored by University of Florida

Envi­ron­men­tal group kicked off UF campus

- by Jeff Schweers, Octo­ber 28, 2013. Source: Gainesville Sun

An envi­ron­men­tal group that was sched­uled to make a pre­sen­ta­tion on Mon­day at the Uni­ver­si­ty of Flori­da on genet­i­cal­ly engi­neered trees was kicked off cam­pus over the week­end and its mem­bers threat­ened with arrest and banned for three years.

Orga­niz­ers with the Glob­al Jus­tice Ecol­o­gy Project had come to cam­pus Sat­ur­day to check out the room they had booked at the McK­night Brain Insti­tute, said Rachel Kijew­s­ki, an orga­niz­er with Ever­glades Earth First of Lake Worth and one of sev­er­al sched­uled presenters.

“We just tried to see the room, and with­in five min­utes we had police offi­cers approach­ing us, say­ing we were try­ing to get into a secure facil­i­ty,” Kijew­s­ki said. “We were issued tres­pass warn­ings, and all of us pre­sen­ters were issued three-year bans.”

Five mem­bers of the group were issued cita­tions and banned from all of UF cam­pus and the UF Health Cen­ter. The one UF stu­dent in their group was giv­en a tres­pass cita­tion from the Health Cen­ter only.

All six have the right to appeal their tres­pass cita­tions before Uni­ver­si­ty Police Depart­ment Chief Lin­da Stump.

UF stu­dent William Bran­don Jones, 28, reserved the 80-seat con­fer­ence room L110‑A on Sept. 30, a month before Mon­day night’s planned event. The reser­va­tion was con­firmed via email by Sab­ri­na Sanchez, exec­u­tive sec­re­tary to MBI Direc­tor Dr. Tet­suo Ashizawa.

Four days before the event was to occur, Jones received an email from Kel­ly Sharp, admin­is­tra­tion and finance direc­tor of the MBI, that the meet­ing space request­ed was unavail­able. “We host a large num­ber of events at the MBI and must give pri­or­i­ty to brain and neu­ro­science relat­ed func­tions,” Sharp wrote.

Jones wrote back that he had put a lot of work into adver­tis­ing the event, that he had emailed every­one in the School of For­est Resources and Con­ser­va­tion, had per­son­al­ly invit­ed dif­fer­ent stu­dent groups, and announced the event in each of his classes.

Sharp replied the Fri­day before the event with apolo­gies that the AV equip­ment in the room had stopped work­ing and it was blocked out for repairs. “We do not have alter­na­tive space to offer,” Sharp wrote at 4:06 p.m. Fri­day, offer­ing to post signs about the cancelation.

Jones replied at 8:55 p.m. Fri­day that the MBI had four con­fer­ence rooms avail­able and won­dered if they were all expe­ri­enc­ing tech­ni­cal prob­lems. He also said he checked the MBI cal­en­dar and didn’t see a con­flict. There was no response to his last email.

Around 4:36 p.m. Sat­ur­day, UF police offi­cers were dis­patched to the MBI to respond to reports that six peo­ple were try­ing to get in with­out a key. The offi­cers found Jones and five oth­er peo­ple, all in their 20s, on the east side of the brain insti­tute. When ques­tioned, Jones said he had reserved a class­room ear­li­er but couldn’t gain access with his Gator‑1 card.

Kijew­s­ki, 28, told police they were there to check out their room in advance. A wit­ness told police that Kijew­s­ki had tried to talk an employ­ee into let­ting her in by say­ing she’d left a back­pack in the build­ing. A wit­ness told police that anoth­er mem­ber of the group tried catch­ing the back of a door as an employ­ee opened it and walked through.

Police found out that the per­mis­sion to use the room had been rescind­ed and that the event had been canceled.

William Ben­ning­ton, 25, a pre­sen­ter with Glob­al Jus­tice, from Burling­ton, Vt., told a reporter over the phone that they were all shocked by the last-minute can­cel­la­tion and had come to the build­ing to see if any­one there could grant them access to a room.

“We just want­ed to see if it was pos­si­ble to walk in and find some­one to talk to about help­ing us out or help­ing us find a dif­fer­ent room,” Ben­ning­ton said. “We were just look­ing for options.”

The UF pre­sen­ta­tion was part of a mul­ti-week speak­ing tour called “The Grow­ing Threat: Genet­i­cal­ly Engi­neered Trees and the Future of Forests.” The tour is aimed at high­light­ing the social and envi­ron­men­tal con­cerns about genet­i­cal­ly mod­i­fied trees, includ­ing con­t­a­m­i­na­tion of non-mod­i­fied trees, increase of fire risks and deforestation.

Instead of giv­ing a live pre­sen­ta­tion, they gave a Skype pre­sen­ta­tion to UF Pro­fes­sor Bron Taylor’s envi­ron­men­tal ethics class.

“I heard the event was can­celed and thought that was a shame,” Tay­lor said by phone. “These folks are pos­ing impor­tant ques­tions that are hot­ly debat­ed in envi­ron­men­tal ethics today. Since the police depart­ment said they can’t be on cam­pus, I arranged for them to come in via video chat.”

Kijew­s­ki said she believes the whole tres­pass inci­dent and can­cel­la­tion of the con­fer­ence room is relat­ed to UF’s research in genet­ic engi­neer­ing. The School of For­est Resources and Con­ser­va­tion has a three-year, $6.3 mil­lion grant from the U.S. Depart­ment of Ener­gy to devel­op loblol­ly pines for liq­uid bio­fu­el production.

“It’s telling that this is politi­cized,” she said. “It’s show­ing us that the uni­ver­si­ty is very ner­vous about any dis­sent regard­ing their research.”

Uni­ver­si­ty offi­cials did not com­ment on whether the can­cel­la­tion was polit­i­cal­ly moti­vat­ed. UF spokes­woman Janine Sikes said the Brain Insti­tute has the right to can­cel or rescind per­mis­sion for a room’s use at any time, with­out giv­ing a reason.