By Josh Hughes
Every year, the Environmental & Sustainability Programs at Western organize an Earth Day event on campus, giving students and the community at large a chance to celebrate the earth and find ways to take environmental action. This year the ESP will be hosting two consecutive days for Earth Day, starting on Friday, April 21 with a tabling session and ending the following day with a keynote speaker and a silent walk to the downtown grower’s market.
The Environmental Center at Western, which has been around since the 70s, has traditionally made a big ordeal over Earth Day, even creating “Earth Week” a few years back to celebrate the earth and learn about sustainability and environmentally friendly practices. While the events change on a yearly basis, this year’s two day event is centered around the concept of “turning empathy into action”. As ESP Director Anna Kemper puts it, “I hope (students) will take away that idea of listening to each other even if you don’t agree with someone — even if you have different opinions — and internalizing that and thinking about how it connects us with the physical environment and what our personal calls to action are, because we’re kind of at a scary point right now.”
The events will start on Friday in the VU MPR from 11 a.m. to 2 p.m. with a tabling session where on- and off-campus groups get a chance to set up booths and talk to students about their respective causes and calls to action. There will be assorted activities including a marine mobile aquarium touch tank and a photo booth, as well as live music and other interactive booths.
The following day, Earth Day itself, the main events will take place from 2 – 6 p.m., originating in the VU MPR and ending downtown. Inside the MPR, there will be a slew of guest speakers, from students involved in activism to a professor giving a spoken word performance. All speakers have no more than ten minutes to express their points and give a talk, leading up to the keynote speaker of the day, Dr. John Francis.
Dr. John Francis, a conservationist, educator and self-proclaimed “planetwalker,” took a 17-year vow of silence after witnessing an oil spill in San Francisco that affected his love for the planet as well as his career path and determination to spread awareness. His journey took him to various institutes across the country, eventually earning him a Ph.D at University of Wisconsin. In 2010 Francis became National Geographic Society’s first Education Fellow, and he is currently also the director for Planetwalk, a nonprofit environmental awareness program. In addition to his vow of silence, Francis entirely stopped using motorized transportation for 22 years, culminating in his autobiography, “Planetwalker: 22 Years of Walking. 17 Years of Silence.”
Following his talk in the MPR, attendees are welcome to join Francis in a silent walk from campus to downtown, where the final events of the day will occur at the downtown grower’s market. Here people are invited to talk to all of the speakers, as well as enjoy local vendors and food donations from places such as Kombucha Town and India Grill. While Friday is free for the community, these speaking events will cost $2 for students and $6 for anyone else.
In addition to the Earth Day event, the ESP will be hosting other assorted events throughout spring quarter, including a May Day Festival at the Outback Farm and an outdoor screening of the documentary “Dirt.” The ESP office can be found in the fourth floor of the VU at VU 424, and students are welcome to stop by for any questions or inquiries they have about what the program is or how students can get involved.
Featured photo by Morgan Annable // AS Review.