Need for Sustainability Brings Back Time for Change Week

Hannah Ross
Tue, 02 Apr 2019 01:01:41 +0000
Campus, News, community service, Earth Month, environment, environmental justice, environmental justice and dinner dialogue, environmentalism, ohio state, ohio state campus, Ohio State community, ohio state university, osu, seeds of service, service, sustainability, time for change, time for change week, undergraduate student government, usg

Time for Change Week is a collaboration between student organizations and campus administrations. Credit: Cori Wade | Lantern Photographer

Ohio State will celebrate the beginning of Earth month with Time for Change Week, a string of events focusing on sustainability efforts in the Ohio State community.

Time for Change Week is a collaboration between student organizations and campus administrations that runs from April 1 to 7 and features both large and small events, as well as different panels.

“The focus is to bring BuckeyeThon-level excitement with these really important, serious topics and give attention to awesome sustainability organizations that work so hard,” Dominique Hadad, director of sustainability for Undergraduate Student Government and a third-year in industrial and systems engineering, said.

Hadad believes that sometimes it’s hard to market tougher topics, such as climate change and plastic waste, to students. She said it is important to bring in students who think they don’t relate to sustainability and prove to them otherwise.

The week kicked off with the sustainability fair that featured 40 student organizations from on and off campus. The idea of the fair was to bring in different kinds of students and get them involved in the community.

Some events will feature more in-depth topics such as the Environmental Justice and Dinner Dialogue, an event on Monday that talked about capitalism and how different companies relate to environmental justice, Hadad said.

Other events, such as the business exposition, will connect business students for networking purposes, which Hadad said shows that the entire week aims to attract different crowds of students.

“I think this week shows campus as a whole what these students are capable of and what they care about,” Hadad said.

The entire week is student-run and exposes students to a variety of different events. Because some of the smaller events can struggle to draw crowds, many of the organizations will put on their larger events right next to the small ones to help increase attendance, Hadad said.

“Time for Change Week isn’t for sustainability majors,” Karly Britt, a first-year in Spanish, said. “It’s for people who want to get involved in sustainability but don’t really know how.”

Britt is helping out at the sustainability fair through her work in USG.

The week of activities ends with Seeds of Service, a day of service where any student or student organization can come and volunteer.

At the event, students will work alongside Friends of the Lower Olentangy Watershed — a group that aims to “enhance the health of the Olentangy Watershed,” according to its website — to plant new trees, clean up litter and clear out weeds.

Student organizations that participate can earn $90 and service hours, according to the Time for Change Week website.

“This is our week to acknowledge what really matters to us,” Hadad said.

A complete list of events can be found on its website https://u.osu.edu/timeforchange/.