Open Letter to Kyle Steele
Kyle,
I never got to meet with you about this, although maybe we could sometime next week (your door says you’re in Ottawa this week), but I think your decision to buyout the contract with Chartwells represents a huge opportunity to invest in and build the student community, and I just wanted to make sure your decisions moving forward work to further that goal rather than take away from it. Moving away from Chartwells also introduces an opportunity to promote socially and environmentally responsible business that Chartwells, despite its efforts, was never able to acheive because of the corporation’s national scope. (Read on …)
Tons of Events This Week!
So we have some more events, and some corrections. This week is jam-packed like no other…we should have declared it enviro-week or something.
First, we’ve got some bottled water news: we’ve started a petition to get it out (more specifically, the signers (signees?) declare their concern over the social, environmental and political issues concerning bottled water on campus), and we’re going to push it at tables in the BAC this week. The times are Wednesday 12:30-4:30 and Thursday 10-12. Come join us for either of these times…we’re probably going to have some taste-testing going on…should be fun.
Second, relay for life is coming up! If you haven’t signed up already, get on it! You can click here to get to the right page. We’re going to combine with the Earth and Environmental Science team and changing our name, so we’ve got about 11 people on board so far. Even if you’re not signed up, it’d be sweet if you could help us with fundraising…we think we’re going to raffle off an enviro-safe gift basket (with chemical-free stuff promoting the role of environmental chemicals in cancer prevention), do some busking, and utilize amy’s talents as an artist to extract money from people.
Okay. Events!
Monday (March 2) - Scot Travers on “True Sustainability for Uncertain Times”
This guy is from New Minas Pulp and Paper, so I’m curious about what he has to say about sustainability. 4:30pm in the KCIC auditorium.
Monday (March 2) - Acadia Farm General Meeting
The Acadia Farm is about to start planting seeds for this coming season, so they’re having a big meeting to brainstorm and plan for this year. It’s happening at 7pm in the Wolfville Public Library (upstairs). See the acadia farm website for details.
Wednesday March 4 - ESSO Movie Night in the KCIC
ESSO is showing “Being Caribou” in the KCIC auditorium at 7pm. The trailer can be found here.
Wednesday March 3 - Fundy Film: “Flow: For the love of water”
The fundy film festival is putting on a documentary about water. Chek out their page on the movie here. 7pm in the Al Whittle Theatre (Just Us).
Thursday March 5 - AES/SO Meeting!
5:30pm…the michner lounge. Agenda: Bottled Water Petition (we’ve started one), Freemarket Signage (we need to make more), Relay for life (we need to recruit and fundraise), and maybe talk about a Morton Centre/keji trip for the month of march, and maybe a bike workshop for the end of the month? And, as always, the floor is free to you to bring up whatever you would like.
Thursday March 5 - Andrew Nikiforuk: Tar Sands - Dirty Oil and the Future of a Continent
7-9pm in the KCIC (I assume the auditorium, but it doesn’t say on the poster).
Friday March 6 - Neal Livingston: Nova Scotia - the next 5 years: An energy plan to avoid a failed society
1-3pm in Clark Commons. The Academy for the Environment is putting both of these speakers on, and they’re both pretty big name.
Potluck Today, Coffeehouse Wednesday
I hope break went well for everybody, I know I’m not quite ready for classes yet. But, as a group coping strategy, the AES/SO is throwing a HUGE MUSICAL POTLUCK tonight (5pm) at my house (36 Acadia St.). The idea is…you bring food OR you bring a song to sing. Preferably both. My mom sent me home with some amazing cornbread which will be around, as well as some also mom-baked cookies and brownies, and whatever YOU decide to bring.
We’ll also be doing some baking for the COFEEHOUSE that’s happening on WEDNESDAY (at 7pm in the michner lounge). I promised free home-baked cookies on the poster, so I’m going to get some ingredients on the AES tab and we can do some mild baking. So if you have a cookie recepie…bring it or email it to me if you can’t come!
I tried to get Ian Spooner’s band to play the cofeehouse as a feature, but they were busy. So..it’s back to open-mic style the whole way through…we’re starting at 7, so maybe if we got there a little early we could have our weekly meeting then? Let me know what you think….it’d be nice to have some help decorating the place.
I appologize for the all-caps. I’m feeling a litle too lethargic to put important things in bold.
Meeting Tomorrow!
I want YOU to coordinate the AES year.
So, we’ve got a meeting tomorrow. For a change of pace we’re going to have it at 5:30, in the michner lounge, and since I’ve promised to bring food for the past jillion weeks or so, I’ll try to remember this time. Besides eating, there are several other important issues that need to be discussed. These may include:
Water stuff: We’ve found all the drinking fountains (we think), and frankly, they suck. And none of them are in well-traveled areas, so we need to decide a way forward on this front. Amy’s going to meet with Phys plant and maybe Andrew Biro (who apparently knows the story) about the lack of water fountains on campus, and we have the art coopertive doing a display on water for World Water Day (March 22), but we’re hoping there’s some student activism that could happen here too…so we’ll talk about what that could be.
Coffeehouse!: We have the michner lounge booked for 2 weeks from today (the 25th) from 7-10, and I asked Ian Spooner’s band (the mud creek boys) and Eric Alcorn’s band (gin and sonic) to maybe play a short set. What we need is ideas for themes, decorations, food, acts, etc.
Potluck!: We’ve got one coming up…a week from sunday. There was talk of perhaps an instrumental potluck, as I know we have violinists, chellists, banjo-ists and guitarists in our midst.
Finally…have YOU ever thought about coordinating the AES of SO? It pays terribly, requires lots of hours, and lots of talking to people. Interested yet? you should be! I know that I would prefer to have a life next year, so these positions are up for grabs.
Yeah! Tomorrow! Michner Lounge! 5:30!
Newfoundland!
Hey! We’re all back from Newfoundland, and it was sweet! Ask us and we’ll tell you loads, but for now you can look at our funding letter that we wrote to all of the wonderful departments that gave us money.
We would like to thank you for your funding to send us four to the Sustainable Campuses Atlantic Conference. The Sustainable Campuses project is a part of the Sierra Youth Coalition designed to implement the values and lobbying the Coalition does in the form of policy at the high school and university level. For the past 4 years, the Atlantic chapter of the organization has hosted a conference with the aim of networking university environmental leaders and providing a forum for discussion on environmental issues in the region.
This year the conference featured keynote addresses by Elizabeth Weir, CEO of Energy Efficiency New Brunswick and Robert O’Brien, director of OceanNET, as well as four sets of workshops focusing mainly on projects that can be undertaken at the university level to engage students or improve university sustainability. The four Acadia representatives attended workshops on Water and Sanitation in the Third World, Success in Lobbying, Community Gardens, Media Relations, Environmentalism and the Developing World, Composting, Regional Waste Management, Group Communication and Electronic Waste.
From this extensive list, conference attendees launched into a Regional Strategizing session to identify areas where interuniversity action could be beneficial. Committees were formed on topics such as Sustainable Curricula, Bottled Water and Residence Challenges. This facilitated relationships to other universities and provided a network through which to organize regional action.
This trip would not have been possible without funding from the Student Activities Fund to help cover the considerable cost associated with transportation to St. John’s, Newfoundland and the conference registration fee. Having four representatives from Acadia did add to the expense, but because of this we were able to draw considerably more from multiple workshops in the same timeslot, as well as solidify Acadia University’s commitment to university sustainability.
Thank you again,
Jenn Herrick
Dewey Dunnington
Amy Buckland-Nicks
James Patterson
Skiing Sunday, Meeting Tomorrow
I’m going to try to contain my enthusiasm, but I’m going a bit hog-wild with all this snow around. But. This means we can go skiing! I check the Martock website, and they have groomed trails for those of us who enjoy the skate-ski variety, but we could also venture to the depths of the south mountain forest (or to cape split?) for a considerably ($15) more free approach. Given what I can do and what others have said…sunday morning works best, but keep me posted if you’re jumping out of your pants excited for this but can’t make sunday morning. I have a pair of snowshoes and a pair of skis for those that don’t have any equipment, and we might be able to wrangle up a few other playing-in-the-snow type items if you’re interested.
Meeting tomorrow is going to be super hands-on…we’re going to first give you a little rundown of the conference, especially the ‘Regional Strategizing’ workshop, where we told other universities we’re going to do stuff. This stuff includes…working on the bottled water issue, throwing a res challenge together for march, and doing some sustainability curriculum work. Second, we’re going to split up and fill out some information on water fountains while putting up Freemarket and Rideshare posters. Then, we’ll reconvene for cookies and hot cocoa and tell heartwarming stories by the fire.
Also, I might have jumped the gun a little bit and applied for a wet/dry liquor license for the Michner Lounge for February 25th (three weeks from today), and we can talk about what we want this to be used for (I was thinking One Million Acts of Green coffehouse, but we can do it on any issue.).
Tomorrow, 5:30, the Michner Lounge. Be there!
Return from Newfoundland…at last!
So, we’re all back, safe and sound from our conference in St. John’s, and despite multiple flight cancellations due to a blizzard or two, it was a rockin’ good time. Speaking of snow…want to go skiing this weekend as one huge environmental society/sustainability office family? It’s supposed to stay cold all week and we’re having another blizzard tomorrow, so let’s ski! cross country or downhill (or as downhill as nova scotia allows) or snowshoeing! Let me know if anybody is down for a foray into snowventuring friday, saturday or sunday.
We got super psyched about this whole bottled-water issue at the conference, so we’re going to move forward with it, building up to world water day on March 22. I know this whole cataloging drinking fountains seems a little extraneous, but it’s one way Dalhousie has gotten started so they can petition phys plant to fix them, make signs as to where they are, etc. So. this is what we’re doing on Thursday this week: combining a mad poster distributing session with hot chocolate, cookies and water fountain-hunting. More on that later in the week.
Enjoy midterm season number one! I know I am.
Oh! And a few of us have decided that there needs to be more coffeehauses (open mics with coffee/tea), so we’re going to throw one the week after ’spring’ break. Hope that’s okay with everybody…because we’re going to need some decoration.
Freemarket now open during the Farmer’s Market, Business Class to develop plan for Rideshare
This past Saturday marked the first of many Saturdays to come where the freemarket will be open alongside the Wolfville Farmer’s Market. In its first Saturday morning stint, the Freemarket entertained a host of marketgoers including kids and adults alike. This could have been due to The Athenaeum’s recent article on the opening of the market, which according to inside sources has fielded more views on the The Ath’s website than any other article from the issue.
In other news, a group in Edith Calahan’s Business Strategies class has been assigned to undertake the role of assisting the AES develop Acadia Rideshare to its fullest potential. In the initial meeting, members of the group expressed concern over liability issues, aesthetics, functionality and target markets. In the coming months we hope to gather user input to improve the site on all of these fronts.
Meeting Tomorrow
- -Potlucks, colossal musical gettogethers and other social events
- -Speakers/workshops
- -Keji/morton centre/maple shack/eagle festival/martock/adventure ski trip
- -Relay for life
Acadia Surpases 3,000 Acts of Green
Starting officially last Thursday, Acadia challenged Dalhousie University to a race on OneMillionActsOfGreen.com to see who could get as many acts of green as students first (3,000 for Acadia, 16,000 for Dal). ”The challenge is to ourselves as much as eachother,” said Sustainability Projects Coordinator Jodie Noiles in a joint press release with Dalhousie.
Dal surpassed their mark of 16,000 acts first Friday evening, but Acadia wasn’t far behind. At last tally, the Acadia group has 3,933 acts of green from 136 users, and Dalhousie 18,989 from 476 users. Scaled to the number of students at each university, this means Acadia has 1.311 acts per student while Dalhousie is slightly behind at 1.187 acts per student. The challenge continues…
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