SPEA’s Earth Week events to finish with Friday extravaganza

The School of Public and Environmental Affairs and the Environmental Management Association kicked off a week of events Saturday celebrating Earth Day, which is April 22. \nAlthough there will be numerous activities throughout the week, a few key events are the open-mike night and the Earth Day Extravaganza.\nSPEA Earth Week Open Mic Night starts at 7 p.m. Wednesday in the SPEA Atrium. There will be an open microphone available to students and the Bloomington community for poetry and music. Along with the entertainment, free food will be provided. \nJulie Graf, a SPEA graduate student, created the event to host “a night of fellowship” for IU students and the Bloomington community. She said that because “Bloomington definitely has a thriving arts community within it,” she hopes that there will be “a stewardship ethic.” She also said she hopes “that people will be able to share their poetry” while providing a “rich literature of environmentally based poems” and “vaguely political music” to bring about change and create awareness.\nThe culminating event will be the Earth Day Extravaganza from 4 to 7 p.m. Friday in Dunn Meadow. There will be a number of activities at the event, such as tree planting, live music, informational booths, free food, a Cornhole tournament and much more. The winner of the Cornhole tournament will receive a pair of tickets to see O.A.R. perform at the IU Auditorium.\nAlong with the preceding events, Kenneth Richards will discuss designing climate change legislation at 11:30 a.m. Tuesday in the business building, Room 108. He will also discuss the current climate change bills in Congress.\nGraf explained that there used to be a campus initiative that provided Earth Week events every year; however, this year the organization lost its funding from IU. \nShe explained that this year’s events came together through “a loose collection of students who were involved in SPEA’s Environmental Management Association getting together, sitting down and saying, we want to have a collective voice and be a cohesive whole.” Through this event they hope to show that there is “presence for action and that SPEA is looking outward,” she said.