Just as the leaves are turning green, Penn is also turning green this week.
Greenfest, held Friday on the College Green, marked the official kick-off event for the second annual Green Week. Green Week will run until April 5 as different students groups under the umbrella of the Student Sustainability Association at Penn — formerly the Green Campus Partnership Student Association — seek to raise awareness of sustainability within the Penn community.
At Greenfest, 22 different groups from Penn and Philadelphia set up booths to educate students about how they can get involved with different sustainability practices that occur on and off campus.
More than 100 students attended the event, which featured live performances from Ya’lla, the Penny Loafers and individual student musicians.
According to College senior and SSAP Co-Chair Abby Waldorf, the event has expanded significantly since its inception a year ago.
“There’s just more collaboration between groups when they planned their events for Green Week,” she said. “I think there’s just more active involvement. It has just grown, since it’s the second year.”
The week features events like today’s Appalachian Story Hour, during which students will have the opportunity to experience culture from the Appalachians, and United By Blue Clean Up Day tomorrow, where students will help clean up Bartram’s Garden at 54th Street and Lindbergh Boulevard.
“Green Week involved a lot of different groups on campus, [and] the more groups we have, the more people we reach,” said College freshman Sara Allan, head of the political committee in the Penn Environmental Group. “I think the group of people who are really committed need to make it easy for others who aren’t so dedicated to be sustainable.”
Many students have an awareness of green practices and sustainability at Penn already, though some think it could be higher.
“I see recycle bins around and I see [green] clubs at activity fairs, but other than that, there isn’t really much,” Engineering and Wharton sophomore Sharon Wang said. “I feel like you hear more about humanitarian efforts.”
At Friday’s kick-off event, others called for Penn to do more to promote green awareness on campus. Paul McCormick, a first-year Ph.D student in the Graduate School of Education, said Penn doesn’t “scream” enough about its environmental efforts, “compared to other universities.”
However, those students who have worked within the green groups on campus said they have seen a noticeable growth in the community’s awareness within the past few years.
“When I came in, the Climate Action Plan was in the process of being written and passed,” said Wharton senior Elizabeth Qian, a member of the Eco-Rep’s executive board. “I noticed since my sophomore year there’s been so many more student-grown, student-led initiatives.”
“It’s helped that the sustainability movement has grown from the administrative side and the student side,” Waldorf added. “People are at least aware now of sustainability on campus.”
However, Qian acknowledged that there remain further steps for the green groups on campus to take to increase sustainability awareness. She thinks that Green Week can help with the effort.
“I think it will increase the level of awareness because you have so many more groups,” she said.
“We hope to raise awareness of green groups and have people learn more about green groups and what we’re doing,” College sophomore and Co-Chair of SSAP Madison Roberts said. “We’re not all tree-huggers, and we have a lot of fun.”
