With Earth Day rapidly approaching, the environmental groups of Allegheny’s campus are getting creative with their Earth Week events. From April 20 to April 28, events will be taking place across campus for the enjoyment and education of Allegheny, with a specific emphasis on this year’s worldwide Earth Day theme; Plants vs. Plastic.
Sofia Maass, ’24, president of Allegheny College Bird Club, explained the events being hosted by her group. To kick off the events, there will be a Presque Isle Walk collabing with Allegheny Outdoor’s Club on April 20th. Then, on Monday evening from 8 p.m. to 9 p.m., Bird Club and Associate Professor of Environmental Science and Sustainability Jesse Swann-Quinn will be hosting a screening of the National Geographic special “Great Migrations” in Quigley Auditorium.
“I think it’s just really important, at least from the Bird Club perspective, to preserve biodiversity. I hope our events will get more people involved with Bird Club and more of our conservation-type projects.” Maass said. “We’ve had nest box building and trail maintenance in the past, so I think it’d be really cool to get more people involved into that through this.”
London Dejarnette, ’24, president of Allegheny’s chapter of the Food Recovery Network, spoke about the events FRN would be hosting that week.
“We have two events that are happening.” Dejarnette said. “One is a screening and spaghetti and meatball dinner. We’ll be screening ‘Cloudy With A Chance Of Meatballs 2.’ We just wanted to have a fun way to talk about food waste. A lot of the time we talk about food waste, it’s kind of sad and doesn’t really attract broader student stakeholders, so we wanted to do something that was somewhat fun.”
Dejarnette also spoke about informational tabling at McKinley’s on Friday, April 26. Called ‘Weigh The Waste,’ it’s an event that all FRN chapters host and provides information concerning composting and food disposal. At the end of the event, FRN representatives will weigh the waste to directly see the amount of food being disposed of by students.
“Not to be like, ‘Oh, students eat less,’ but to be like, ‘This is the collective effect of our entire student body,’ Dejarnette said. “So, we’ll be giving out information about food waste there, too. We just wanted to do more broadly engaging events. A lot of the time we have a very specific section of the student body that’s attending our student events, so we wanted to engage broader amounts of students because everyone should know about food access and food waste.”
Bianca Sanchez, ’24, vice president of Green Students of Color Society, described the events the organization is hosting. Their festivities will begin Monday, April 22, where GreenSOCS will attend the ASG Open Tab event at Grounds for Change. GreenSOCS is also hosting a community bike ride event at the Senior Circle at 6 p.m. Then, all sustainability groups on campus will be involved with the Trashion Show in the lobby of the campus center on Friday, April 26 at 6 p.m.
“I will be speaking at it,” Sanchez said. “That fashion show’s a big one; we make outfits out of trash and scraps, and it’s a really fun one.”
GreenSOCS is also hosting a campus cleanup on Saturday, April 27 from 12 p.m. to 3 p.m.
“We did it two years ago and this year we’re doing it again,” Sanchez said. “We’re going to be meeting at Brooks Walk, but there’s also going to be a sign-up sheet going around soon. I’m really excited for this year because, typically when we do Earth Week, GreenSOCS and the other clubs, we correspond a bit for different events. But, we wanted everything to be super collaborative this year, working together and supporting each other.”
Julia Sonen, ’24, president of Students for Environmental Action, discussed her involvement with the Trashion Show and campus clean-up, as well as a free clothing swap on Wednesday, April 24, in the campus center lobby from 12 p.m. to 1:30 p.m.
“The goal is to really make people think about the land and the space, and everyone’s interactions with consumerism and the environment — whatever it means to them,” Sonen said. “I think different Earth Days have different focuses. I know two years ago it was really focused on environmental justice, which I think was one of my favorite Earth Week themes, but it always changes.”
The entire goal of these events is more than just connecting with students for an enjoyable experience; it’s also about educating the community about humanity’s place on this planet.
“We all live on this Earth,” Sonen said. “We have to exist with that in mind and with the recognition of the limited resources of everything on this planet, including ourselves. I think anything we can do to help people break cycles that allow them to forget that is really important.”