Campus Promotion

I agree with Adam and would like to build upon his idea. Before we can expect anyone to change the way they live, I think it’s important to educate them about how those changes can have a positive effect on not just their lives, but the school as a whole. In order to make the changes required to make Oxy a greener school, we need to do more promotion. However, I’m not sure that mass email is the most effective way to do it. I know a lot of kids that rarely read the Oxy Digest, so I don’t know if that will reach as many people as other mediums. Using recycled materials, we can put posters up around The Cooler, little placards on The Marketplace tables, or even provide information in the Oxy Weekly. If we can provide information to people in highly populated areas such as the Marketplace and Cooler, or a highly read publication like the Weekly, I think it will have more of an impact. Also, I think that the information that we provide should be more geared towards why we should care about making Oxy green. I remember my sophomore year, in the 246 version of this class, Prof. Vallianatos was able to translate some of the raw numbers that reflected Oxy’s carbon footprint, water waste, etc., to a level that the average student could understand. Instead of just stating the numbers, we should build on this and compare these raw numbers to real world, everyday things that students can comprehend and relate to. People love fun facts like those and if we were able to display some of those facts around campus, I think people might respond. Before we can expect the campus to get behind any of our potential projects, it’s important to show that they are necessary in the first place. In addition, we should try to estimate the potential effects that these projects will have on reducing these numbers. If we can show students that our projects will actually work, maybe we can get more people to participate in them.