Sierra Club on a trip to Hocking Hills last weekend. Courtesy of Devin Headrick
To celebrate our planet, student leaders will bring the Ohio State Earth Day Festival to the South Oval Friday.
From 3-7 p.m., student sustainability organizations — like Sierra Club, American Conservation Coalition, Eco-Peace, Buckeye Precious Plastics, Students for Recycling and Carbon Capture as well as local businesses – will host the Earth Day celebration, according to the event’s page. The festival will include music from five student bands at the Browning Amphitheater in Mirror Lake, local vendors, a free clothing swap and food trucks, Ben Rosenthal, president of student organization Eco-Peace, said.
“We’re very motivated this year to make a change and have a very grand celebration,” Rosenthal, a second-year in computer science engineering and philosophy, said.”We’re also just going to have fun.”
After months of planning, the celebration aims to target not only the environmental majors, but those outside of the sustainability community at Ohio State, Devin Headrick, president of Sierra Student Coalition, said.
“We felt like music especially is a great drawing to try to bring in my friends from the dorm who are finance majors, computer science majors,” Headrick, a second-year in environmental science, said. “Whatever major you are in, no matter who you are, if you hear live music coming from around Mirror Lake, you’re probably going to stop by.”
There will be a rotation of five bands — Greta Bea, Funky Ducklings, Piss Basement, Riot Riders and Texas Instruments — and three environmental speakers, according to the event’s page.
“For those who are sort of new to the sustainability space, my absolute goal, of course, is to bring people in, get them interested in it, get them caring, you know, and share ways they can get involved and help the Earth,” Headrick said.
There will be almost 50 tables from various organizations from Ohio State and Columbus, Brenden Fowler, president of the American Conservation Coalition at Ohio State, said.
“We’re just trying to show what’s sustainable in Columbus so that people realize that what’s around them and that there’s a whole lot more good in the community than is usually put out there by most news,” Fowler, a second-year in biochemistry, said
PetPromise, an organization in Columbus dedicated to rescuing animals, will come to feature pet adoption, Fowler said.
“They are also bringing pets there with their handlers,” Fowler said. “There should be puppies.”
With Columbus businesses as well as bigger corporations like Lyft attending, Fowler said students can gain “knowledge, connections and free things.”
Along with many pop-up thrift stores, there will be a free clothing swap, Rosenthal said. He encourages people to bring clothes to the festival.
“Anybody can take whatever they want. Anybody can leave whatever they want,” Rosenthal said.
Hedrick said the planning of the festival started in 2022 after sustainability clubs at Ohio State connected with their shared interest in taking care of the Earth.
The collaboration of many voices has made the event build to a larger scale than ever before at Ohio State, Bart Elmore, advisor of the Sierra Student Coalition, said.
“This year, there was a real effort to make sure that the whole student body and all its great diversity was represented because the environmental issues aren’t for one group of people. This is our planet, and we have to figure out how to solve it as a collective,” Professor Bart Elmore, advisor of the Sierra Student Coalition, said. “I think there’s a sense that, ‘Hey, we want to do something about it. And we’re one of the biggest universities in the country. Let’s go and raise our voices.’”
Headrick said they followed the frame of the original Earth Day in 1970 when organizing the event — a day where college students come together to “build awareness of the earth and all of its beauty and its issues involved.”
“It’s a time to celebrate what’s already been accomplished and look forward to what we can do together in the future,” Headrick said.
