Blog Action Day

Today is Blog Action Day and I thought I could contribute.

This year's topic is climate change so I will be talking about the environmentally friendly movements in Slippery Rock. Some people think it is quite difficult to do anything beneficial to the environment or that nobody will listen about the environment. Slippery Rock is proof that this is not true.

Slippery Rock University campus has a large campground on it. This camp has a long history at the school. The major attraction in the winter is the giant ski hill which people go sledding down whenever they feel like avoiding classwork. Accompanying this is the ski lodge. It holds many facilities for making the ride down the hill more enjoyable like a fire, picnic tables, and shelter from the all too common wind. All of this was threatened by a proposal to turn the campground into a parking lot. When the students got wind of this they were outraged. They formed a group called Leave It Green which voiced to the university that the students wanted the campground to stay even if it meant having to walk an extra half mile to the parking lot.

The campground is here to stay but Leave it Green didn't stop just because it was secure. Almost half of the students at Slippery Rock are commuters. A lot of them live just barely off campus (think across the street) and drive to class everyday. To curb this behavior the Green Bike Initiative was started by Dan Wilson. A bunch of bikes were brought together and made available for anybody in the slippery rock community to use. These bikes are still in use today, but the system has changed only slightly. The Green Bike Initiative also accepts bicycle donations for use in the program. And yes, all the bikes are actually green.

Recently, environmental friendliness has become a major affair on campus. To help with the movement the Green Fund was started. Every semester $20,000 is set aside to help projects which are environmentally friendly. One of the recent projects to receive some of this money is the NextBus GPS tracking system servicing the shuttles. There are two buses which drive campus and the community for the students to ride. Often times it is slightly off schedule. The NextBus system provides a website and phone number for students to check arrival times for each stop. The idea is that if students can more reliably predict when the bus will come, then they won't resort to driving everywhere.

That's all for this year's blog action day. Don't forget, everyday is an opportunity for change.