By: Sandy Wilcox
The Oregon Student
Public Interest Research Group has big plans for the coming year at LCC
with a proposed campus-wide Dodge Ball tournament, a continuing fight
for affordable text books, Sustainapalooza and much more.
Probably the most rigorous of OSPIRG's upcoming events would be the
Don't Dodge the Issues, campus-wide Dodge Ball tournament that is being
planned this term.
"I think it makes a lot of sense to have a big event that gets all
student groups together. So, I want to have a dodge ball tournament …
all students are invited to have teams, any student group can have a
team and jump in. I want to get 15 or 20 teams all in the basketball
court or in the soccer field depending on the weather," Joe Marino, LCC
OSPIRG campus organizer, said.
Marino stressed how great he thought it would be for students to get
involved in the event, mentioning clubs and groups across campus that
he hoped would be willing to join in the dodge ball festivities in the
hope of bringing forward issues they don't want to see dodged, before
speaking on the upcoming hunger banquet that OSPIRG will be holding.
"This will be sort of a sister event to our hunger banquet which will
be more of a professionally driven and adult style event at the end of
the term on Nov. 16. It will also be a volunteer fair and a food drive,
but we're basically working to highlight a lot of hunger and
homelessness issues at lane through this hunger banquet. So the Dodge
Ball tournament will go out with a big bang, have a lot of fun, involve
a lot of students. The hunger banquet will involve a lot of community
nonprofit groups and hopefully more faculty and staff from the school
as well," Marino said.
OSPIRG's Sustainable Foods Campaign and students from Intro to
Sustainability are currently working on a cafeteria composting project.
The hope would be to lower the 21.74 percentage of LCC waste, which is
attributed to cafeteria food waste which is currently not composted. So
OSPIRG will be staffing a composting bin in the cafeteria from 10 a.m.
to 3 p.m. every Thursday for the rest of the term. The recycled food
will help to provide compost for the campus gardens, which in turn will
provide food for the cafeteria.
"Your food scraps will help us to make Lane a more sustainable campus.
So, on Thursdays we'll be in the cafeteria working to save the college
money, promote local foods and support a more sustainable school,"
Marino said.
The continuing campaign for affordable textbooks continues with OSPIRG
looking into the possibilities of online textbooks also known as
open-source textbooks. Currently, Charles Long, coordinator for the
TextBook campaign, has been researching the use of online textbooks and
meeting with faculty across campus to discuss adopting some form of an
open-source textbook model, in order to ultimately lessen the cost to
students.
"Teachers have definitely always wanted to lower textbook cost. They
aren't doing this on purpose. They just don't have the resources to get
open-source textbooks, I'm just finding ways of getting them easier,"
Long said.
Amber Alexander, coordinator for Campus Climate Challenge, discussed
some of the upcoming events and issues that will be addressed by the
Campus Climate Challenge campaign beginning with the recent light bulb
exchange.
"Incandescent bulbs use about 160 pounds less carbon a year and save
you six to seven times less what you'd pay a year, retail cost in the
store," Alexander said.
As far as upcoming events for the fall term, the Campus Climate
Challenge will be having a movie night and some coal power versus wind
power wrestling matches where actors will walk up to a crowded spot and
break it down right there on the spot, which Alexander referred to as
"guerrilla theatre."
Alexander stated that the year's upcoming Sustainapalooza, which is planned for April 26, is still in the planning stages.
"We're hoping to make Sustainapalooza bigger than it was last year,
we're hoping to make it off-site somewhere in the community, off-site
so we can have more community involvement," she said. "We're looking
for bands right now, we might also have circus performers. We don't
have a site yet, but that's a week after Earth Day and the week leading
up to that we will be doing a lot of earth-friendly events on campus."
