UMass Boston has been celebrating Earth Week for a few years. Usually a small number of students get together at the beginning of the spring semester to begin planning. This year a group of people have been planning the event since the fall semester.
Throughout the fall semester individuals to help plan the event were actively recruited through announcements in classes, posters, and flyers. This created a committee of undergraduate and graduate students, staff, administrators, and faculty highly dedicated to planning events for this year’s Earth Week.
The theme this year is “Building an Economically and Environmentally Just and Sustainable Future; If We Don’t Do It, Who Will?” The purpose of this theme is to promote collaboration of University stakeholders and local community members to take action on pertinent issues of sustainability.
Earth Week is part of a much larger vision on campus: Education for Sustainability (EFS). Greening the campus, greening scientific research, greening our academics, and greening community outreach are four goals currently being implemented. In effect, Earth Week should increase students’ awareness of EFS, and the overall movement toward building a sustainable future.
The Earth Week committee has split into groups dedicated to accomplishing separate goals for the event: Outreach/Reading Course, Logistics/Funding, Events, and Community/Industry Participation. One of the requirements of the Reading course is to create a poster for a Poster Session to be held during the week.
Funding from both the Student Senate and the Graduate Student Assembly will enable a major speaker event (the speaker has yet to be announced) and will facilitate the distribution of re-usable grocery bags. Members of the committee had considerable difficulties acquiring funds from the student senate due to unspecified problems with the written proposal.
A film series has also been planned. Each day, various films, such as “Silent Spring,” “Affluenza,” “Not the Number’s Game,” and other related titles will be displayed in the Wit’s End and an as yet unnamed theater.
The group has a Solar Van demonstration and a Green Design demonstration planned. A clean up of the beach near UMass is being organized in order to engage students.
Petitions for a green cafeteria in the new student center, green design of all new construction at UMass, an environmental science graduation requirement, and lowered T-pass prices for UMass students have been discussed. These are ideas being discussed in hopes of increasing student activism.
This event is scheduled to take place April 22-25, 2003.