Few students participate in green event
Only a few people showed up to ‘stomp to the stadium’ on Saturday.
Sustainable Carolina hosted a “Stomp to the Stadium” event in which all participants would rally at the Green Quad Learning Center and walk together to the Vanderbilt game in order to reduce the total amount of greenhouse gas emissions the campus produces — but only five people showed up while bus lines on Greene Street remained jam-packed.
Regardless of the low attendance, Renee Dickman’s green steam couldn’t be stopped.
“We encourage everyone to leave their cars and walk to the stadium,” said Dickman, a public health graduate assistant at Sustainable Carolina.
The idea corresponded with Moving Planet, a day when people from over 175 countries engage in over 2000 climate-friendly activities. Moving Planet is a part of 350.org, an organization that seeks to reduce our current carbon dioxide level of around 390 parts per million to 350 ppm.
Since this year’s theme is transportation and it fell on the same date as gameday, Dickman said that there was an opportunity.
“It gives us the opportunity to raise awareness of using less harmful ways of transportation for the environment,” she said. “With it being gameday, what better way to fit the goals of Sustainable Carolina and Moving Planet than by getting people to walk?”
They walked from the Green Quad to Marion Street. From there they pressed on to Rosewood Drive and then eventually the fairgrounds.
“We planned a route that has less traffic for safety reasons,” Dickman said.
Even though she’s eco-friendly, Dickman encouraged the students to take a shuttle on the way back since the game would be over at night.
“We don’t want any student to get hurt,” she said.
Despite the low turnout for Stomp to the Stadium, the would-be environmentalists were not the only ones marching to the stadium. They bumped into other people who were walking to the game as well. But they had their own reasons for using their feet to travel.
“There’s a lot of traffic and no parking,” said first-year undeclared student Jesse Fico, who was with his mother. “And Mom needs the exercise.”
Third-year pharmacy student Derek Bremmer was coming from his apartment in Aspyre, so it was “faster and cheaper” for him to walk, he said.
Meghan Troy, a fourth-year biology student preferred to walk rather than “sitting in hours of traffic” for economic reasons.
“You have to pay for gas and it’s bad for the environment,” Troy said.
Dickman said that they don’t know if they would do this again, but they would like to encourage everyone to walk to every home game.
“Whatever impact we make is a success,” she added. “We’ll learn from this.”