This article is satirical and fake. It is a part of our annual Rectum special April Fools edition.

I know you all know what I’m talking about when I mention the secret grove and the controversy surrounding it. It’s kind of an NDSU staple. However, there is something about this year that’s different. This year for some reason people have taken to trashing the grove almost daily. It’s kind of ridiculous. I know we’re supposed to let the freshmen know about the grove because its a wonderful restorative place for us students but lord, could you all use a bit more discretion? Everyone and their roommate is spending all day drinking and smoking in the secret grove and throwing everything on shelves and tables across the grove.

I’ve been here for three years now and I have NEVER seen this kind of abuse to the grove before. The water in the well is undrinkable from how many Busch Lite cans have sunk to the bottom. There’s no shade because someone decided that they wanted to have some sort of stick fight and ripped the tree branches from the canopy in a way so that there is not one single place you can sit anymore without the sun baking you. Speaking of sitting, almost every lounging chair has been broken. They still lay on the ground fine I guess but like, how do you even break that many chairs without feeling bad?

We need to come together as a community and tell the new people that we like the secret grove? It rules? One of the main reasons I stayed here instead of transferring is that no other college or university has a secret grove quite like the one we have here. If we all band together and clean the grove when we leave maybe the new freshmen will start. I know it’s only the second week of school but they’ve kind of left a near-irreparable mark on this space. There aren’t even squirrels anymore, they’ve gotten too scared to come down and eat out of your hands.

There is one other theory about what has been happening to the grove and it has to do with NDSU Transform. The administration has not made their position on the secret grove clear yet but it is in prime on-campus real estate and I’m sure there are some figures who think everything would be a lot easier if it just disappeared. Or got trashed so often that students stop using it because it is just a cesspool of nasty. Now that I think about it, it is pretty hard to reach the canopy without special landscaping tools. The Busch Lites were freshmen though, we can all agree on that.