— Green Week at OU focuses on raising awareness
By Julianna Parker
Transcript Staff Writer
The university is the place where new ideas can be tried out, and institutions can be on the edge of the future. So this week, the University of Oklahoma Student Congress hosted Green Week, an event designed to raise awareness about what the university is and is not doing to help the environment.
"Students should be proud of the university for being this advanced, but there's definitely room for improvement," said Jordan McGee, Student Congress chair.
The event is put on partially so that administrators will know how important sustainable practices are to students, he said.
The university has made strides, though, and Green Week is also about letting students know the efforts the university is taking to be green, he said. The university has switched default printer settings to double sided paper to waste less, and Housing and Food Services will open a new restaurant in the fall that will compost all its waste, he said.
So Student Congress created a Web site to inform students about sustainable practices at ou.edu/green .
"It's kind of one central point to go and find out what's going on with campus sustainability," McGee said.
The Web site also lists Green Week events, which started Monday and continue through Friday.
Today at 4:30 p.m., the keynote address will be "Christianity and the Environment" by Dr. Tom Boyd at the Mary Eddy and Fred Jones auditorium at the Fred Jones Jr. Museum of Art.
A free film screening of "The 11th Hour," Leonardo Dicaprio's documentary, will be 8:30 p.m. Friday in the Union Courtyard. In the event of rain, it will move to the Union Food Court.
Wednesday evening, the Politics of Sustainability roundtable brought together politicians on a local and state level, including Mayor Cindy Rosenthal, state Sen. Andrew Rice and Jim Roth.
A week-long event was sponsored by Housing and Food Services, the Live Green Challenge, said Lauren Royston, Housing and Food Services spokesperson.
Recycling containers have been available in the residence halls for students to use for several years, she said.
"To heighten attention toward this resource, Housing and Food Services developed a recycling competition, the Live Green Challenge," Royston said in an e-mail. "As part of the Live Green Challenge, students within the residence halls were also asked to conserve energy by unplugging items and turning off lights when not in use."
The housing center that recycles the most material and conserves the most energy will be honored and rewarded with a gift for the entire community, she said.
"Housing and Food Services works to provide products and services that are both good for the individual and good for the environment," Royston said. "Our sustainability efforts complement the environmentally conscious initiatives already in place across the University."
Housing and Food Services also sponsored an organic and local food fair 11 a.m. to 1 p.m. Wednesday on the South Oval.
Students sampled local and organic food for free. Brett Stidham, an OU student who helped organize Green Week in his capacity on student congress, attended the event just before it started raining at noon.
"I feel that on our college campus we're too wasteful," he said. The key to changing that is through education, he said.
"I think this week more than anything is about awareness," he said.
Courtney Bucklin, political science junior, agreed raising awareness was important, but also stressed that it's a long-term effort.
"We know we're not going to change everything overnight," she said at the food fair.
