Tuesday, November 13, 2007

Shift that power!

We took a whole bunch of people to Powershift 2007 November 2-5. In total, there were 48 SMCM students at Powershift-- that's about 2.6% of our entire student body. Just think-- if almost three percept of the students at St Mary's were willing to spend a weekend fighting climate change at another campus, just imagine what we can get done closer to home! Five of us stayed for Lobby Day, during which we descended on Capitol Hill and thronged the halls of Congress. It was pretty fantastic. (Remember, remember the 5th of November!)

Here's (almost) the whole gang, photogenic as always:
SMCM at Powershift

In case you didn't know, St Mary's was featured as the second biggest victory in the nation! In the "Challenge Toolkit," distributed to all the attendees of Powershift, our student referendum to switch to green power is second only to the entire University of California system committing to carbon neutrality. Way to go!

Almost immediately after returning from shifting that power, we held a workshop on Tuesday, Nov 6, to plan Focus the Nation. Eban Goodstein himself came down to lead the workshop, which was pretty exciting. Focus the Nation will be taking place on Jan 31, so expect to hear more about it as the time approaches. If you're interested in being a part of planning, contact Erin McDermott.

Last but not least, Monday, Nov 12, we held a forum on global warming with the Center for the Study of Democracy. Our panelists were Bill Williams (SMCM Professor of Biology), Mike Tidwell (CCAN), and Jack Russell (St Mary's County Board of Commissioners). There was a good mix of students and community members, and I feel like a lot of important issues were raised to get people thinking about what needs to be done to prevent climate change from going any further.

Don't forget about Vegan Thanksgiving, which will be taking place this Sunday (Nov 18) at 5:30 in the QA rec room, right outside the Co-op Kitchen. If you plan on cooking something, send your ingredients list to Anna Vaudin so that SEAC can buy things for you. (Free food!)

1 comment:

linaflyren said...

Hello,
I am a journalist writing for Stockholm's universities student magazine. I'm writing an article about climate friendly universities and was wondering if you could give me an email address to one of your organizers so that I could ask some questions? That would be wonderful, I think students here in Sweden would find it very inspiring to read about your work! Thanks in advance.
Best regards,
Lina Flyrén