Prior to the event, the shanties had been deemed illegal by the Hanover Police Department and the College had requested that the protesters vacate the Green prior to the traditional festivities of the Dartmouth Winter Carnival. Despite these efforts, the protestors remained in their wooden structures and refused to stage their demonstration elsewhere. When negotiations with College administrators reached an impasse, a band of twelve undergraduates took matters into their own hands and drove a flat-bed onto the Green, dismantled three of the four shanties, and sent the lumber off to a local charity. Former Editor-in-Chief of "The Dartmouth Review" and "Committee to Beautify the Green" spokeswoman Debbie Stone was reported as acknowledging that the Committee was "partly a project of the "Dartmouth Review"."