Thanks for coming out to our first meeting last Monday! We had a fabulous turnout. Hope y’all had fun this past week, visiting various campaign meetings and checking out what you might want to get involved with this year. As a reminder, we’ll be having another meeting this coming Monday for Big Seac, 8:30 in McGlothlin 20.
Also, we have two campaigns that have not yet met – Energy, which will meet at 7:00 pm on Sunday in the SEAC office, and Surry, which will meet on Monday at 7:00 in the SEAC office (I always enjoy making Mondays a SEAC extravaganza by going to Surry and then Big SEAC – who wants to do homework on a Monday, anyway? If you don’t recall, the Energy campaign has some great projects including instituting an Office of Sustainability on campus, and Surry is working with community members in Surry, environmental organizers, and Williamsburg City Council to deal with the proposed coal-fired power plant across the river. So, if you haven’t been able to make it to a campaign meeting yet, you can get in on the action tomorrow and Monday!
Our Recycling, Biodiversity and the brand-new Gardens/Food Potentiality campaign met last week, and have some great ideas in the works for the coming semester! If you missed those meetings, they’ll be reconvening this week as well. Don’t hesitate to come out and get involved with protecting the College Woods, improving recycling knowledge and practice on campus, and growing some sweet gardens. At last report, the meeting times for these campaigns were: Biodiversity on TUESDAYS at 6:00 PM – this is a change from what was announced last week, Recycling on Tuesdays at 9:00 PM, and Gardens on Wednesdays at 6:30 PM.
Meeting times are subject to change at this point in the year, so if you can’t make those listed above, contact someone from the campaign. We want you!
Hope to see y’all on Monday. In the meantime, check out this awesome turbine
Here at SEAC, we can’t wait to get started on our initiatives for the new year, and to get introduced to all of the new friends the Lorax made at the Activities Fair! (Lorax was very happy to meet you all.) Our first meeting this year is on Monday, August 29th – stay tuned for the location. If you aren’t sure what SEAC is all about, check out the rest of our website. As a brief overview, we are a student organization that works on a variety of initiatives related to sustainability and environmentalism. Our four major campaigns are Biodiversity, Recycling, Energy, which tackle related on-campus issues, and the Surry Justice League, which is working against a new coal-fired power plant in Surry County. We have a lot of great opportunities to get involved in environmental issues on campus and in the local community, and always welcome new faces at our meetings. Hope to see you soon!
From April 18th to April 23rd this year, SEAC and the Committee on Sustainability put together the very first Earth Week.
SEAC has put together a campus-wide celebration of Earth Day every year for almost a decade, and it’s a holiday we always love. It’s a chance to sit down with friends and free food, listen to music, and celebrate successes in sustainability efforts at the college and beyond. This year, thanks to a collaboration with the Committee on Sustainability, the College of Arts and Sciences, Dining Services, and Homebrew, and thanks also to the infinite dedication of our Sustainability Fellow Sarah Hanke, our Earth Day Celebration was expanded into a week-long extravaganza:
MONDAY: Campus Gardens Day
On Monday, we sent volunteers to the various Campus Gardens to weed, plant, and get them in working order for the summer growing season.
TUESDAY: Ciclovida Documentary
On Tuesday, we were lucky enough to host a bicycle-powered documentary screening and discussion with the farmers behind Ciclovida. Ciclovida was inspired by a tour, conducted by the landless farmers Inácio de Nascimento and Ivania de Alencar through Brazil in search of natural seeds. The screening was of a movie, describing their 3000-mile journey, after which we held a Q&A with Inacio and Ivania themselves. They are currently biking up the East Coast. Check on their progress at: http://ciclovida.org/en
WEDNESDAY: Ciclovida Workshop
On Wednesday, Ciclovida held a workshop in which they explained the roots of the landless movement in Brazil, as well as the necessity for natural seeds and self-controlled and self-sustained agriculture.
THURSDAY: Sustainability at W&M Screening
On Thursday, William and Mary’s environmentalist filmmaker-in-residence Jes Therkelsen screened his film Sustainability at W&M, which details the creation in the past few years of most of the sustainability efforts we have on campus today, especially the Green Fees program. After the screening, a panel discussion was held with the leaders of campus sustainability, including President Reveley, the chairs of the Committee on Sustainability, and our very own Lauren Edmonds, a member of both SEAC and the COS.
FRIDAY: Fresh: the Movie Screening
On Friday, SEAC hosted a screening of the film Fresh, which discusses local agriculture and the challenges it faces across the country. This film features Joel Salatin, farmer and founder of Polyface Farms, which is a Virginian farm located near Staunton, which delivers the freest of free-range meats to Williamsburg on a regular basis! Check them out: http://www.polyfacefarms.com/default.aspx
SATURDAY: Earth Day Celebration!!!!!
As we do every year, this year we had our outdoors Earth Day celebration, featuring vegetarian food by Dining Services and music by Homebrew, and many caterers and tablers. President Reveley, in what is our favorite new tradition, read the Lorax to the crowd, and the Rock River Gypsies, a band made up of William and Mary (and SEAC!) alums, came down despite their increasing fame to perform at their seventh W&M Earth Day.
We had a great Earth Week 2011, and we hope to see you there next year!
As you may have heard, William & Mary is celebrating Earth Week this week, April 18-23. The celebration centers on a theme of sustainable food and agriculture, and has a full schedule of workshops, concerts, films and speakers which we are very excited about.
An outline of the scheduled events:
Monday, April 18
12pm-1pm: Book Discussion in Swem Library: The Nature Principle by Richard Louv (must RSVP to Karen Berquist, kaberq@wm.edu for this event)
5-7pm: Service Day in the Campus Gardens (meet at 5pm at the Sadler Center Terrace)
SEAC Secondhand Sale Collection, donation boxes located in all residence halls
Tuesday, April 19
Student Sustainability Poster Display in the Sadler Center Lobby (open all day)
SEAC Secondhand Sale Collection, donation boxes located in all residence halls
8pm-10pm: A night with Ciclovida, a movement of farmer-activists from Brazil, including a documentary screening, Q&A session, and music, Andrews Hall room 101
Wednesday, April 20
Student Sustainability Poster Display in the Sadler Center Lobby (open all day)
SEAC Secondhand Sale Collection, donation boxes located in all residence halls
1pm-2pm: Biofuels, Agrofuels, Farmers and Climate Change workshop led by Ciclovida, Chesapeake C in the Sadler Center
6:30pm-8:00pm: The True Cost of Coal presentation by the Beehive Collective, a collective of artists, storytellers and activists: Andrews Hall room 101
Thursday, April 21
Student Sustainability Poster Display in the Sadler Center Lobby (open all day)
SEAC Secondhand Sale Collection, donation boxes located in all residence halls
8pm-9pm: Sustainability at W&M Documentary Screening and Open Forum, Swem Read and Relax Area
Friday, April 22
Student Sustainability Poster Display in the Sadler Center Lobby (open all day)
SEAC Secondhand Sale Collection, donation boxes located in all residence halls
10am-1pm: Hazardous and Electronic Waste Collection Day, W&M Hall parking lot
2pm-4pm: Chesapeake Bay Game, Tyler Hall room 102 (must RSVP to Randy Chambers rmcham@wm.edu for this event)
7pm-9pm: Screening of Fresh: The Movie, Washington Hall room 201
Saturday, April 23
Student Sustainability Poster Display in the Sadler Center Lobby (open all day)
8am-12pm: Williamsburg Farmer’s Market, Merchants Square in Colonial Williamsburg
11am-4pm: Earth Day Celebration, Crim Dell Meadow
11:00 – Student and community environmental group tables open (including SEAC Secondhand Free Yard Sale)
11:15 – Band plays-Austin Powell
12:00 – Vegetarian feast provided by Dining Services
12:15 – President Taylor Reveley reads Dr. Suess’s The Lorax
In other exciting news, the recently-dormant SEAC blog is officially up and running. Here, we will keep you updated on SEAC’s activities, as well as environmental issues on campus, in the community, and in the world at large. If you want to learn more about how to get involved with environmental issues on campus, come to Tyler 102 at 8:30 pm on Mondays for our weekly SEAC meetings. Hope to see you there!
Meetings will be held on Mondays in Tidewater A at 8:30. Meetings usually go for an hour, but sometimes we get sidetracked. Its not our fault, we just get excited about the environment.
If you don’t recall, the Energy campaign has some great projects including instituting an Office of Sustainability on campus, and Surry is working with community members in Surry, environmental organizers, and Williamsburg City Council to deal with the proposed coal-fired power plant across the river. So, if you haven’t been able to make it to a campaign meeting yet, you can get in on the action tomorrow and Monday!
