Student Activism: Students for Environmental Concerns
Student for Environmental Concerns is a registered student organization founded in 1968. They are a group of students that care about the environment and are dedicated to make changes by taking actions within the UIUC community. They have three main goals, to work to maintain the stability, integrity, and beauty of the natural world, to promote and participate in the sustainable food revolution, and to pursue clean energy on and off campus. They have four main projects going on year-round and they are Beyond Coal, Sustainability, Education and Earth Week.
Beyond Coal » Education » Sustainability » Earth Week »
The audio below is some basic introduction to all projects under SECS now.
Please click here to check out the full podcast!
Student activism is an important way for students to voice their opinions on campus. I believe students have the right to express their ideas on different topics and to encourage schools to take actions. Students can join organizations, start a protest or rally, and hold meetings to reach their goals. Through my research, I learned that Student for Environmental concerns has done many protests and eventually made the university agree to shut down the Abbott power plant and it has held many forums to educate the campus community in order to raise people’s awareness on environmental issues.
While doing my research, I realized that there are more people following events regarding environmental topics than I thought there would be. I even saw many of my friends expressing their interests in the events on social media during earth week. I am very delighted to see that students care a lot about the environment and are willing to spend their time on events that are meaningful, so they can help improve the community. With the help of social media, it is a lot easier for student organizations to get attention from a larger population of students and the information spreads much faster than it did in the past.
Exposing students to the matter also slowly changes our way of making decisions. Stickers in the bathroom on campus saying, “Remember paper towels come from trees!”, remind students and faculties to reduce their use of paper towels, or at least use a reasonable amount of it. Although there are still a lot of improvements that can be made in people’s daily habits, the idea of protecting the earth has been spread around much more widely than the past.
There are a lot that we can do to help, and a huge number of them are easy to accomplish in our normal routines. It can be as simple as bringing our own water bottles, finish our food and turning the faucet off when we are flossing or brushing our teeth. If more and more people are willing to change a little bit, then we will make a huge difference in conserving the environment.
All photo credits used in the project belong to Students for Environmental Concerns.
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