Protesters gave Elm a deadly fungus

                A final swipe of the axe will bring the "Arborgate" scandal to a dramatic close -- the large Elm tree on the President's Lawn is scheduled to be cut down this Friday evening after protesters pretending to save the tree gave it a lethal fungus, one professor believes.
    Approximately 30 students rallied around the tree last week to protest its alleged removal. The initiators of the protest now claim it was a hoax, constructed to serve as a case-study for a course one of the participants is taking.
    "We're in, like, a social movements class," one (understandably) anonymous sophomore said. The protest was to continue "semester-long," as a joke, he said.
    But it seems the students' mock conservationism might have brought on the tree's downfall.
    The tree has contracted Dutch Elm Disease (DED), and George Elmore, associate professor of biology and director of the environmental studies program, thinks the students gave it the illness.
    DED is transmitted via contact with other infected trees or organisms. When asked if the infection could have been caused by a student at the protest, Elmore said, "absolutely."
    "You have to realize that once you've been [in contact] with a tree, you've been [in contact] with every tree that tree has been with," he said. "The chances for infection are high when you've been gallivanting with a different tree every weekend." Elmore said even full-body banana suits didn't constitute "sufficient protection."
    When asked what "gallivanting with a tree" would entail, Professor Elmore refused to comment, bowing out by saying he was late for Singles Night at the ENT Convention in Boston.
    "The disease infects the vascular tissue of the elm, clogging it and preventing water transportation throughout the tree," Elmore said. "Trees with the disease decay from the inside out." In other words, the professor said, "the tree is DED inside."
    There have been no reports of the tree listening to Eliot Smith or My Chemical Romance, though Elmore assured the Daily that if symptoms progressed it would come to that.
    Senior Dan Buonaiuto, who used a penguin outfit as his "protection," denied any foul play. "That tree knew just as well as we did what the deal was. We were just there to have fun, no strings attached. Elms be trippin'," he said.
    As for the protesters who did not use full-body protection, Buonaiuto said, "It wasn't necessary. We'd all showered recently." Buonaiuto and many of his friends, it might be noted, is in the Tufts Mountain Club. So no one believes that stuff about the showering.
    Close friends of TMC have since claimed that the group does not, in fact, ever shower.
    When asked for a statement, the tree said "I feel so dirty. I thought they liked me. I thought we had a connection. I guess I was wrong."
    The poor Elm was wrong. DED wrong.