More Trees Near ’Poon Vandalized

It seems the trees outside the Lampoon just can’t get a break. Or maybe it’s that they’re getting too many.

Just a month after an editor of the Lampoon—the semi-secret Sorrento Square social organization that used to occasionally publish a so-called humor magazine—was arrested for taking a handsaw to three trees on the Mt. Auburn Street island, all of the newly planted trees have disappeared.

It turns out there was yet another act of destruction, only this time much more severe.

“After the first act of vandalism, four of the five trees were still standing,” said Rebecca A. Fuentes, the community relations manager for the Cambridge Department of Public Works, “Sometime over the past week it was discovered that they were vandalized again...One was pulled down and the others were hacked at to a certain extent.”

And so, on Tuesday, Cambridge’s forestry division came and removed three Japanese maples and a crabapple that could not have been saved.

The perpetrators of this recent act remain unknown and a spokesman for the Cambridge Police Department said it has no new information about the case.

The Lampoon has a long-standing animosity toward trees in front of the Castle. In the late 1980s and early 1990s, there were several failed attempts to destroy a tree outside the building.

Before hanging up abruptly, a man who answered the Lampoon phone number said that he did not have any information.

As for the first chopping in October, ’Poonster James A. Powers Jr. ’08, was charged with vandalizing property and now must pay a restitution of $14,000, according to Jessica A. Venezia, a spokeswoman for the Middlesex District Attorney.

Powers also faces the possibility of a maximum sentence of up to three years in state prison, up to two years in a house of correction, a one-year driving license suspension, and a $1,500 fine, Venezia said.

And as for the future fate of the trees? Fuentes said that the possibility of a reemergence of greenery is not on the horizon.

“At this point,” she said, “we’re just going to get through the winter and see what needs to be done in the spring.”

For now, the view of the Castle up Mt. Auburn Street remains unobstructed.