Mother Nature may not realize that she is harming her own celebration — SUNY-ESF’s Earth Week — with her recent rains.

“I’m really hoping it doesn’t keep raining or else we’ll have to move more events inside,” said Laura DiCarlo, a sophomore environmental forest biology major and coordinator of Earth Week. “But either way, it’ll still be a good time.”

In celebration of National Earth Day on Tuesday, student organizations in the State University of New York College of Environmental Science and Forestry and other coordinators have planned many activities, academic and social, for this week’s Earth Week that ends Saturday.

“We hope that all of the activities bring the whole campus together,” said Leah Flynn, coordinator of student affairs at SUNY-ESF. “We really want to raise consciousness that there are definitely a lot of things you can do to help the environment.”

The week began with an ice cream social Monday at noon in the Nifkin Lounge of SUNY-ESF. With an attendance of almost 250 people, the social is considered a great success, said David Crandall, a junior policy and management major and programming co-chair of the SUNY-ESF undergraduate student association.

“We’ve traditionally had the ice cream social as part of the Earth Week events,” Crandall said. “Give free food to get them involved; that always works.”

SUNY-ESF professor Dietland Muller-Schwarze gave a lecture Monday in Moon Library. Women in Scientific and Environmental Professions Speaker Series of SUNY-ESF sponsored another lecture by Dr. Christiane Hudan of Centre Saint-Laurent in Montreal, Canada, on Tuesday.

DiCarlo said that about 30 students attended each lecture, which is an unusually high number for lectures.

“I’m very happy with the turnout so far,” DiCarlo said. “We’re really hoping to reach more students from SU during the rest of the week.”

One of the many upcoming events of the week is the Barbeque and Activities Fair at 12:30 Wednesday on the ESF Quad. Organizers have planned many different forms of entertainment for an estimated 400 guests, including a hand drum workshop, an exhibition of Toyota’s Prius, a hybrid car, and the planting of ivy in the next phase of the living memorial for Sept. 11, 2001, Flynn said.

Student groups will be holding fund-raisers and will also set up tables around the Quad to attract interested students, Flynn added.

DiCarlo said that other Earth Week events include a Superchron and Dark Hollow concert at 5:30 p.m. Wednesday in the Nifkin Lounge and a performance by Groovestand at 8 p.m. Friday in Hendricks Chapel. Students will be able to actively participate in cleaning the environment at the 2003 Earth Day Cleanup from 10 a.m to 12:30 a.m. Saturday at the Westcott Community Center.

The SU and ESF chapters of the New York Public Interest Research Group is also participating in the week with two events, DiCarlo added. A speaker will give a lecture about tobacco and its effects on the environment at 5:30 p.m. on Thursday in 140 Bray Hall, and there will be an Earth Day festival at noon in Thornden Park.

“I hope it brings out a lot of faculty, students and staff,” Flynn said. “It’s a completely student run event, and they have been putting their heart and souls into it.”

Published on April 22, 2003 at 12:00 pm