Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: TUESDAY, October 3, 1995                   TAG: 9510030083
SECTION: VIRGINIA                    PAGE: C-1   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: CATHRYN McCUE STAFF WRITER
DATELINE: HOLLINS                                LENGTH: Medium

STUDENTS FUSS OVER LAY OF LAND

Strands of red plastic tape are tied around two tall oaks and three dogwoods in front of the old brick alumnae office on the Hollins College campus.

Those are the trees that will be saved.

Thirty-eight mature magnolias, sycamores, cedars and other trees have fallen to bulldozers and chain saws over the past week as the college renovates its entrance from U.S. 11.

It's enough to make Kelley Shinn make a fuss.

"I'm really upset. That's a devastating number," the sophomore from Daleville said Monday.

Shinn decided to stage a protest - what she calls a fuss - amid the construction crews, surveying stakes and bare dirt that used to be the college's landscaped entrance.

A few other students showed up after a while, having just heard about the protest. Most students were in class until noon, Shinn explained.

But despite their small numbers, the students wanted to get their point across.

"We work really hard to get here, and they chop these down without asking us," said freshman Shawn McCracken from Duncansville, Pa.

"It's just the point that they didn't let us know," added Samantha Wilson, a sophomore from Augusta, Ga.

Shinn's sign spray-painted in green read: "If we are paying, where's our choice?''

For the past year, the Virginia Department of Transportation has been widening U.S. 11/Williamson Road to four lanes, and adding a turning lane and a stoplight at the college entrance. VDOT said the school had to realign its front driveway for safety reasons, Hollins spokeswoman Linda Steele said.

The college hired a Charlottesville company to redesign that area, replacing the brick gates with a lower brick wall, adding a circular drive in front of the Cromer Bergman Alumnae House, and relocating another campus drive.

The new look reflects the parklike atmosphere of the rest of the campus, which Stanley Abbott, a renowned landscape architect and chief designer for the Blue Ridge Parkway, worked on in the 1960s and early '70s.

Several students and alumnae sat on a committee last year that made recommendations for the $750,000 project, Steele said, adding that VDOT and private contributions will cover the entire cost. A "conscientious effort" was made to save as many trees as possible, but some had to be cut down.

"Everyone has been saddened by the loss of the trees," Steele said. But no more will be cut, and the school will replace the lost trees this fall with 86 oaks and magnolias, and add 300 boxwoods, all donated in part by an alumna who runs a nursery in Brookneal.

Shinn took little comfort from that, however.

"OK, that's plus. But do we get a voice in the renovation? Or in the new plantings? I don't want baby sprouts in here; I'm going to college now."