Students’ Views

SEAK (Students for Environmental Activism and Knowledge) put together a campus energy challenge for all Southwestern students during April 7th-24th. The Energy Challenge is full of events created to help everyone understand and further their knowledge in environmental sustainability. The events of the Energy Challenge are getting students, professors, and staff members involved in order to promote sustainability.

Students signing the Environmental Pledge — photo by Paige Menking.

On Monday, April 7- SEAK hosted “Boxing Match: Coal Fired Power Plant (Nathan Shaw-Meadow) v. Wind Turbine (Preston Hollis).” Where the two SU students fought-it-out on the Mall while discussing and passing out information about clean energy sources. SEAK also has student represents from every dorm/apartment building on campus to help meet the goals of using less energy on campus as a whole.

Coal vs. Wind — photo by Nathan Shaw-Meadow

Wind power wins! — photo by Paige Menking.

On Tuesday, April 8- There will be a movie screening of ‘Who Killed the Electric Car?’, which discussion facilitated by Dr. Northrop, of the economics department. Thursday night there will be a recess, where everyone is invited to turn off their nights and play games on the mall at 9 pm. The events continue with another movie screening, this time of ‘Kilowatt Ours’ with discussion facilitated by Dr. Loomis.

April 16/17- There will be Carbon Footprint Caculations, where students can come to the Commons during their lunch hour in order to determine their impact on the environment. There will also be another movie event of watching ‘Crude Awakening’, with Environmental students/Religion professor Dr. Hobgood-Oster.

The event I’m most excited about is the “Do it in the Dark (Study Break) PARTY”, co-hosted by Kappa Sigma next Wednesday. Wednesday night is the typical ‘party’ night at SU, and this one looks be an entertaining one.

SU always has a big Earth Day celebration and this year’s will be Thursday, April 24. There will be tie-dying, music, games, and so much more on the Mall for all students.

SEAK has been very active on campus this year with changing practices to make people more environmentally aware. Along with SEAK, the bike collective project I’m working on is going very well. This past weekend, I went to the Rhizome Collective (sustainable community in East Austin, check out their website) to learn how to do bike repair with Bikes without Borders (group that repairs donated bikes and brings them to Mexico to donate to people in need of transportation). I learned how to fix a flat, how the bike generally works, and I even home with my own fabulous Bianchi road bike that I worked on with my friend Paul (and SU alum who now lives/works at the Rhizome). I’ve been riding to school since I got it, and the weather in Georgetown has been perfect for this.

This past weekend was also Kappa Sigma Alumni weekend, there was a big active/alum softball game and later a party at the Sigma house where The Bus Stop Stallions played music all night long (the keyboard player, Zach Knox, is a Sig/SU alum). Along with music from the Stallions, I also went to a poetry reading at Korouva, the student-run coffee shop on campus. The poet was SU graduate Kelsey Shipman, who is now living the dream in NYC. Since graduating in 2006, Kelsey has produced several books of poetry, and her performance of these works had the entire room in awe. Check out her blog for more information about her amazing work — you will thank yourself.

This weekend is the 3rd Annual Tri Delta Strike Out Cancer Kickball Tournament benefiting St. Jude’s Children’s Cancer Research. I had the honor of designing the shirts for the event this year, and teams from every Greek organization will play each other all day Saturday in order to win money for their charities. Also, back to the Bike Collective, I’m teaching middle school students from the Operation Achievement program some general bike care along with others from Bike Collective this week. Along with this, we’re trying to organize a Grand Opening for the bike shop, and a website (will link whenever it gets made).

As far as actual school work goes, I’m SO busy. I have three research papers due next week — for Japanese politics, Theories of Class, and Latin American Art History — I’m going a little crazy with being worried about getting all my work done on time, especially since there’s so many fun activities to be distracted with (also going to Feist on the 15th in Austin, and CAKE is playing SU on the 17th).

So that’s most of what’s going on this week at SU… check out all the links for poetry, music, and environmental action!