Sophia Hammerle thought she was showing up to a community forum on June 7 to protest the impending sale of the USC Peace Garden, displacing what had been a beloved shared space between USC and South Central residents. Instead, she was told to start digging up the plants and harvesting what she could.

“I started crying as soon as [a Peace Garden intern] told me to start digging up plants because up until that moment, I thought we were going to be fighting it,” said Hammerle, a former volunteer and USC alum. 

Founded in 2022 by Camille Dieterle, associate professor at the Chan Division of Occupational Science and Occupational Therapy, the USC Peace Garden just north of campus has served as a wellness space for occupational therapy courses, environmental research, and the promotion of health and environmental justice. On June 30, however, the 10,000 square-foot lot it sits on is set to be sold.

During what former Peace Garden Communications and Social Media Intern Sophia Leon thought was a normal team meeting on May 28, Dieterle told employees that USC’s Real Estate and Asset Management Leasing team was selling the garden’s lot, and that they had 30 days to keep any plants they want and to get rid of the rest. 

Leon said the news was unexpected, as her internship contract through the President’s Sustainability Internship Program had just been renewed for another year.

“The immediate reaction was just shock, because we hopped on this meeting and this [was] not the news that any of us thought we were going to get,” said Leon, a graduate student studying digital social media. “It was told to us like a done deal, like this is happening, no questions, no time for discussion.”

When the Daily Trojan reached out to the University for comment, it did not detail its reasons for the sale, instead pointing to a letter sent to former Peace Garden interns on June 6 by Chief Sustainability Officer Mick Dalrymple and Chan Associate Dean Grace Baranek. The letter read that the University is committed to relocating the garden in a “thoughtful manner.”

“We recognize the importance of establishing a new location to ensure the continuation of this impactful initiative and its contribution to holistic health and engagement,” the letter read.

The proposed new location would be “on or in very close proximity to campus,” according to the letter. 

The garden’s Instagram page broke the news to the broader community in an Instagram post on June 4.

“Your support is crucial to our efforts,” the post’s caption read. “Please share this post, sign our petition and send us your stories.”

Several of the Peace Garden interns stepped down from their roles during the June 7 community forum. Leon said she resigned from her position because she was told she couldn’t use social media to post about the situation anymore. 

“If we can’t voice our efforts and show what we’re doing to try to save the space, then what are we doing here?” Leon said. “It doesn’t feel right to post miscellaneous posts of plants that are just going to move while ignoring the bigger issue at hand.”

Hammerle, who graduated in May with a bachelor’s in narrative studies as well as gender and sexuality studies, discovered the garden three years ago when she started to feed a stray cat who lived there named Sunshine. She said USC’s proposed new locations on the University Park Campus would prevent access from South Central community members due to the security checkpoints. 

“The mission of the Peace Garden was always to unite students with the surrounding community,” Hammerle said. “I think USC has kind of a bad reputation for being a bit of a gentrifier.”

Hammerle said relocating the Peace Garden would be extremely difficult because it contains mature fruit trees that can’t be simply re-planted, and its unique character is tied to its current location. 

Peace Garden volunteer and rising senior Anya Jiménez said Dieterle introduced her to the garden just two days before freshman year began. Like Hammerle, Jiménez views the garden as a space that offered a real connection to its surrounding neighborhood.

“When we’re looking at USC, we’re looking at a legacy of displacement and the way that USC develops into South Central without engagement or interaction even with the local community,” said Jiménez, who is majoring in writing for screen and television. “The Peace Garden is one of the only direct connections that USC has to the outside community.”

The loss of the Peace Garden raised concerns about USC’s development in areas where the South Central community had opposed expansion, Leon and Hammerle said.

“[The Village] is a part of this larger history of pushing out the surrounding community,” Hammerle said. “I feel like the garden has been a really great space for students to meet community members and the other way around.” 

From 2006 to 2017, the University invested $700 million to develop USC Village, building student housing, a dining hall, classrooms and a retail complex. 

Leon said she and the other two former interns sent letters to President Carol Folt, who has championed sustainability initiatives during her tenure, to try and receive support for the Peace Garden. 

“She was this big pillar of sustainability for USC, so we’re like if she doesn’t know about this, then there’s a chance that we could get her on our side,” Leon said. “We never heard a response.”