By Chris Drabik
Staff Writer
The College held its annual Earth Week, a five-day long series offering various events related to Water Watch, the College’s environmental club, and its continuous efforts to enhance the campus community from Monday, April 20 to Friday, April 24.
Students had the opportunity to attend professor panels on climate change as well as view a screening of a documentary featuring climate change deniers in American politics called “Greedy Lying Bastards.” The week also included a massive, campus-wide clean-up where students could volunteer to do their part to make campus a more beautiful place.
As Water Watch’s major event of the semester, Earth Week is extremely important for delivering their message while helping the community.
“The goal of Earth Week 2015 was two part — to encourage more sustainable lifestyles and initiatives on campus while also advertising Water Watch to increase our membership,” said Jason Hammer, a senior health and environmental sociology major and Water Watch president.
The organization strived to create a balance between fun and energetic activities to go along with enlightening discussions that could attract both passionate environmentalists and ordinary students.
“After being in the organization since signing up at the student activities fair my freshman year, I came into senior year as president wanting to completely revamp Earth Week,” Hammer said. “This did not only mean changing our small activities to large events, but also focusing on making the week more meaningful.”
To complete this mission, Water Watch joined forces with other organizations on campus, which not only helped more students to get involved but also helped the club gain a name for themselves.
“For any club, it is extremely difficult to gain new members, but I felt that Water Watch needed to prove this year that we are a legitimate organization, and we needed to get our name out there,” Hammer said. “To do this, the best strategy I saw was to connect with other clubs and people on campus, in order to get the help we needed to have a consistent week of events and to increase the school’s awareness of our organization.”
After a very informative Earth Week 2015, Water Watch is eagerly looking to the future.
Eric Mauro, a junior electrical engineering major and the club’s current vice president, has his own vision for the future of Water Watch when he takes over the position of president next semester. He intends to keep the same work ethic of those who made Earth Week 2015 such a resounding success.
“Just seeing it all come together, all of these people getting involved, that’s what it’s all about,” Mauro said.
