West Chester University was one of the 182 campuses nationwide to air the live broadcast entitled “Chill Out: Campus Solutions to Global Warming,” Wednesday ,April 18 in Sykes Student Union. The National Wildlife federation calls universities vital to the long term process of saving our environment, which is why they started this competition.
The winner of the competition, in which over 100 Universities joined, was California State University, Chico State Campus. This campus combined students, faculty, networking and action into one to receive the prize.
CSU Chico is dedicated to their “green campus” program which is committed to cutting down their waste. According to University officials, the campus also offers 147 courses that focus on global climate change.
CSU Chico says they are committed to changing the way people live. Other winners include CSU Santa Barbra, Oregon Institute of Technology, Monmouth University and Richard Stockton College, which are both located in New Jersey.
The first broadcast was live from George Washington University and moderated by Andrew Lee, a student from Clairmont College.
Lee said that students today have a “profound purpose” in helping to end the destruction of our environment.
Al Gore also called into the broadcast to encourage students to take part in activities around campus to stop global warming and promote interest in saving the environment.
“Meet the challenge of the climate crisis,” Gore says to students. He also believes that students are leading the way to a “better world” he says.
“We can do it,” Gore said to urging students to take immediate action on what he calls a “planetary emergency.”
Although he did not take part in planning this event on campus he says there is much interest on our campus.
“When we showed ‘The Inconvenient Truth’ people were psyched about it,” McKiernan said.
“There was tremendous interest” he says “one of the two biggest events of this year, nothing drew like that”.
McKiernan said that although there is a big interest on campus things like the end of semester coming and the fact that it was an afternoon showing affected the turn out.
McKiernan also said of the recent events that took place on Virginia Techs campus students were reflecting on campus life and the students of Virginia Tech.
Paul Morgan, the advisor for the Earth Group, also said that the event was late to campus, and the Earth Group had a hard time to get the word out to students.
Morgan also says that interest around campus is definitely there, although there were not many students.
Morgan also says it’s hard to draw students at the end of the semester because of all the papers and exams that are coming up.
“Chill Out: Campus Solutions to Global Warming” was a competition sponsored by the National Wildlife Federation and brought to West Chester University by the Earth Group in celebration of Earth Week.
The live broadcast which took place from 3:00 p.m. to 4:30 p.m., was broadcasted to an estimated 18,000 students and faculty, was to have campuses around the country be engaged in the environmental activities to stop destroying the environment and help in the global warming efforts.