So, have you ever found yourself in this conundrum? You’re walking around campus between classes and hunger strikes. You have no Snickers bars, and you have no time to feast. You know the Arbor line is going to be too long, and you know you didn’t bring your wallet to class, anyway. You are in quite the predicament: Your belly rumbles but temporal, spatial and fiscal constraints prevent you from quelling your appetite. So you march on to class, hungry and tired. You’ve heard the brain works better on a full stomach, but this time you’ll bite the bullet and try to break the curve on the intelligence-versus-food intake graph.

But you need not bite any bullets too much longer, for if Chancellor Yang takes the following advice, he will keep our bellies full and our minds alert with ease.

I suggest the planting of several fruit-bearing trees around campus. How wonderful it would be if the quad between Buchanan and the library were adorned with a delicious Granny Smith apple tree, or perhaps the resplendent Japanese Plum tree?

When I walk around the campus in the early morn, I find sprinklers shooting every which way. They keep our beautiful campus green and looking good.

But I contend that, in addition to assigning our campus water resources to lazy trees that produce nothing but branches, we should devote our sacred water to trees that produce delicious fruits.

This is a simple idea if you think about it, and it flummoxes me that we haven’t done it yet. Apple trees on campus – an unpretentiously elegant idea.

But I digress. There is an underlying philosophy to the fruit-bearing trees idea. If we are going to consume scarce natural resources for public benefit, we should try to maximize their impact in our favor. So while I suggest that we plant fruit-bearing trees on campus, I suggest further that we plant them around Isla Vista, the great state of California, the entire nation, the whole earth – wherever hungry people are.

OK, I got a little lofty there, but you get the idea. If we’re going to have trees around town, they might as well bear delicious and readily edible fruit. I mean, we’re going to water them anyway; we might as well get some bite for our buck.

This is a fortuitous time for this idea. The Isla Vista Master Plan is underway; Isla Vista is at a crossroads. I’ve taken a thorough look at the I.V. Master Plan. It’s very interesting, thorough, imaginative and impressive in its attention to detail. An interesting part of the plan was the inclusion of new tree species into the I.V. folioscape. They’ve got the trees listed down to the scientific names: genus and species. A few sound pretty cool; none bear fruit.

So, while the plan has begun, it is nowhere near complete and subtle changes like this can be made. How about the master planners plan to plant a cherry tree in Anisq’ Oyo’ Park, a fig tree on Estero, a Fiji apple tree in Doggy Shizzle Park?

I doubt this idea will make it into Obama’s hands and onto the national agenda, but it is possible that it could make it into the local agenda. While we can send them to Sacramento or Washington to lobby for our political interests, can’t we ask them to politick on behalf of our gastronomical necessities as well?

Or we can ignore this simple idea, and I’ll be stuck by my lonesome to wonder what type of life we’d live if fruit hung free from the trees outside our homes. We’ll have to see what the boss thinks, though. It’s up to Chancellor Yang. I don’t plant the trees around here — yet.

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