USU celebrates Earth Day
The Environmental Coalition of Students gathered on the Taggart Student Center patio to celebrate Earth Day on Tuesday with live music and several booths promoting environmental responsibility on campus and throughout Utah.
Vanessa Welsh, a senior environmental studies major and the new president of ECOS, said, “The biggest message today is showing our support for 100-percent post-consumer recycled paper campuswide.”
To show support for recycled paper on USU’s campus, ECOS had paper trees made for students to sign and attach to a banner to take to President Kermit L. Hall’s office.
Welsh said, “We have 16,000-plus full-time students, and using recycled paper is a minor step, and it is the least we can do.”
Another group with a booth was the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, which has a mission to protect Utah’s remaining wild desert lands.
Margi Hoffman, outreach coordinator for SUWA, said, “We just want to make students aware of threats to wilderness land in Utah and to give them the ability to protect them, so when they’re older they still have wilderness in which they can explore.”
Welsh said, “We just want the university to be more environmentally responsible. We are the future, and we are inheriting the Earth.”
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Representatives of the Southern Utah Wilderness Alliance, Glen Canyon Institute and others distribute literature and answer questions about their organizations during Earth Day. (Photos by Scott Davis)