A day for action

It only comes around once a year. Every spring, the anticipation in the air is palpable as students prepare for this special day and all the excitement it promises – a weekend of fun, enthusiasm and some pretty decent parties. \nFor IU students, April 22 will be an Earth Day to remember.\nYeah, I said Earth Day. What did you think I was talking about? \nAlthough it shares its time slot with Little 500, that doesn’t mean the celebration has to be diminished. Rather than banishing it to a corner and sending it to bed without supper, we should incorporate this ill-used holiday into all the crazy – I mean, wholesome – festivities of the Little 5 weekend. Just as Little 5 extends far beyond the actual few hours of the race, various organizations around campus have planned a full week of events to show our appreciation for good ol’ Mother Earth.\nSo why should you care? Well, that’s your call, but the whole concept of the celebration is pretty cool. In the late 1960s, as the legend goes, U.S. Sen. Gaylord Nelson (snicker) saw the aftermath of a grisly oil spill in the Santa Barbara Valley. He was so upset by it that he called for an environmental teach-in to be held April 22 to spread awareness of the crazy things that people were doing to degrade the environment. Modeled after a Vietnam War protest, the teach-in gave politicians a sense of the widespread support for remedial environmental action by the government. \nThe idea apparently caught on, since the day is now officially observed in more than 175 countries. Since the first Earth Day in 1970, we have come a long way, although we admittedly still have a lot of ground to cover. In that time, we have developed the Environmental Protection Agency on the federal level and several state agencies, in addition to a sizeable crop of regulatory legislation.\nSo do your part here on campus and check out some of this stuff. The events planned are broad in scope, encompassing everything from brown-bag lunches to Cornhole tournaments. And if stereotypical notions have convinced you that learning about the environment is limited to long-haired, leaping tree-huggers, think again. In fact, none of these events actually require you to present your hippie ID card at the door (I know – what a relief!).\nKeep your eyes peeled around campus for fliers, articles and other reminders about these events. In the next week, you will have some pretty cool opportunities to expand your scope of knowledge about the planet you’ve been living on for, well, all your life, through solidarity marches, tree plantings, recycling-center tours, poetry slams, live music, free and dirt-cheap food and chances to win prizes.\nBetween all the low-key fun (and the not-so-low-key fun) of Little 5 weekend, show Mother Nature you care and make an effort to attend at least one event. You might be surprised at just how much you learn.\nHappy Earth Week!