By
Annie Atherton
April 23, 2008
Live music, free seedlings and a few people covered in blue paint drew attention to a campus Earth Day event yesterday.
Led by Your Revolution, WashPIRG, Washington Student Lobby and ASUW, Earth Day 2008 aimed to unite various activists and introduce new developments in voter registration.
“Our vision was to link Earth Day with civic engagement,” said sophomore Chris Jordan, a member of Your Revolution.
Organizers brought in multiple musical acts and speakers, including UW President Mark Emmert and musical group The Senate.
“I really liked the music,” senior Jessica Caple said. “The booths were informative and there was a lot of variety.”
At the Voter Lounge, volunteers helped students register to vote on laptops. Students were able to add the Your Revolution application, a program that allows users to register to vote online, on Facebook.
The application also uses state records to find out whether one’s friends have voted so that users can invite their friends to register to vote.
“We want to translate ideas into action, and make being active as easy as possible,” Jordan said.
Your Revolution, now a certified nonprofit organization, was started about a year ago by UW students.
The event on Tuesday kicked off the voting project and the FriendsVote Competition, in which student groups at all Washington and Arizona schools compete to register the most voters.
Because the project is so new, members tried to catch people’s attention — thus the incentive for painting themselves blue.
“It’s kind of eccentric,” junior Sammie Rayner said. “It has a startling effect. People automatically ask us what we’re doing.”
Other student groups hosting displays at Earth Day ranged from pro-choice campaigns to the Sierra Club, an environmental organization.
Seniors John Butler and Jamie Hall represented the UW Experimental College, an organization that offers no-credit nontraditional classes for students, and said their classes on solar home design and green real estate promote environmentalism.
“Experimental College was started in the late ‘60s, so roots are sort of in an alternative lifestyle,” Butler said.
Like Your Revolution, Experimental College has utilized online registration, successfully cutting its paper consumption by 40 percent.
Students interested in learning more can visit yourrevolution.org/FriendsVote, or continue checking the HUB lawn for the many student activists tabling this spring.
8 Comments
#1 Anonymous
on April 23, 2008 at 4:05 p.m.(Seattle, WA | Unverified Name)
The reporters for The Daily display their incompetence again. While there's nothing wrong with the article, it is quite apparent that the list of "Groups involved with Earth Day" was simply compiled by taking the names of every organization tabling by the HUB, regardless of whether they were promoting environmentalism or not. Anyone with an ounce of common sense knows that the College Republicans would not be "involved with Earth Day," (they were promoting something to do with guns). The same can be said for some of the other organizations, like Relay For Life, which is about cancer, not the environment. And I'm willing to guess that Veterans Against the War was expressing opposition to the war for reasons other than the carbon emissions from tanks in Iraq.
The list caught my attention when I noticed my fraternity on it, since our table yesterday was not extolling the virtues of "green" beer cans or anything like that. While I don't mind seeing my organization included on this list, it does disappoint me to know that no one in The Daily was even capable of noticing the absurdity of this list before publishing it.
#2 student
on April 23, 2008 at 5 p.m.(UW Campus | Unverified Name)
Dear Anonymous,
It must be hard for such an opinionated person to not have an actual forum to voice your anger and discontent.
Do you realize how trivial, trite and small you come across when trying so hard to slam a college newspaper?
Surely you have better ways to spend your time and energies.
Sincerely,
A Student
#3 Student
on April 23, 2008 at 5:35 p.m.(UW Campus | Unverified Name)
Check out this video the Your Revolution team just put together this about a week ago. I think it does a great job of explaining their project...
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KReyEw...
I would further like to add that you do not need to be a member of a non-profit that has green-peace as their central mission in order to care about the environment and get involved in events like Earth Day.
#4 Bryce McKibben
on April 23, 2008 at 10:06 p.m.(Seattle, WA | Unverified Name)
The Your Revolution Earth Day event was about bringing together groups of all stripes and political beliefs who support civic engagement on campus.
#5 Student
on April 24, 2008 at 12:15 a.m.(Seattle, WA | Unverified Name)
Dear Anonymous,
You are an idiot.
Sincerely,
A Student
#6 Another Student
on April 24, 2008 at 1:14 a.m.(UW Campus | Unverified Name)
Anonymous,
Read the first quote from the article.
"Our vision was to link Earth Day with civic engagement."
#7 Nicholas
on April 25, 2008 at 3:14 p.m.(Maple Valley, WA | Unverified Name)
Those guys in green sure look good!
(www.SustainabilityIsSexy.com)
#8 Timothy
on May 2, 2008 at 1:33 p.m.(Guelph, Canada | Unverified Name)
Guys in green? Yessir! They were 'branded' - had a cohesive message - and dam good looking!!! Although the one guy did look a little old for college.
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