 "Photo: Lane S. Goodman | Student Life")
A national student movement and a local campus group combined on Thursday to call for voters to make the environment their top priority.
Green Action, a Washington University student group with a focus on environmental activism, and Power Vote, a nationwide non-partisan organization that seeks to elevate climate change issues in this year’s election, worked for a common cause. On debate day, affiliated students erected nine-foot windmills around campus, near areas where live television broadcasts were taking place.
“People often times quarantine the environment as its own separate issue and put it so far down the list, and oftentimes they forget that national security and the economy are all totally contingent on the approach we take on the environment,” freshman Emily Averna said.
The joint effort spent the day trying to enlist young voters to pledge their vote for “clean and just energy,” according to Power Vote’s Web site.
Specifically, Power Vote distributed a petition requesting students to support candidates who support “green” jobs, investing in clean energy, cutting global warming pollution, ending dependence on unclean sources of energy and reengaging as a leader in the global community. The national Power Vote goal is one million pledges.
“We are trying to collect one million votes across the nation to show politicians that the youth care about clean energy, green jobs and climate change,” sophomore Peter Murrey, a member of Green Action, said. “Youth are going to be an important part of this election. If [the candidates] don’t talk about the environment, we are not going to listen to them. We’re not going to give them our vote.”
Despite the numerous organizations and interest groups that have converged on campus, the Green Action-Power Vote coalition gained considerable attention from the press, partly due to the presence of miniature windmills on Mudd Field in front of Graham Chapel and in front of Olin Library throughout the day.
“I’m impressed with how into and how responsive [students] are to what Green Action has to say,” junior Alexandra Fine, a Green Action-Power Vote coalition member who aimed for her group to collect 1,000 signatures for Power Vote by the end of the day, said.
The group of over 40 Green Action members had garnered more than 700 pledges at the University, pushing the nationwide total to 187,206 signatures as of Thursday evening, according to the Power Vote Web site.
Fine added that Power Vote has gotten some but not enough attention from local and national media swarming the campus for the vice presidential debate.
“So far we’ve gotten some [media attention] but we deserve a lot more. The issues we’re talking about are those of all youth and anyone who wants a future here.”
The group made appearances on local television affiliates and was featured in a national segment on CBS’s “The Early Show.”
Averna was one of at least a dozen Green Action members who were dressed in green and were holding a windmill at the taping of “The Early Show” at 5:30 a.m. on Thursday.
“We can vocalize the concerns of college students,“ Averna said. “Youth are really invested in our future.”
With additional reporting by Puneet Kollipara, Becca Krock and Johann Qua Hiansen
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