Published: 4/28/2016 2:06:28 PM
Every April 22 since 1970, ecologically minded residents of the planet have celebrated Earth Day to raise awareness about the environment. Last Friday, students at the University of Massachusetts Amherst capped off a week of sustainability-centered events with a morning of gardening, an all-day yogathon and an Earth Day festival featuring 30 campus and community groups.
As sophomore Rebecca Rulnick planted a cluster of pollinator-friendly lobelia in the Franklin Permaculture Garden, she noted, “I’m supposed to be doing volunteer work for one of my classes and I like getting my hands in the dirt. So it’s like a two-birds-one-stone kind of thing.”
Outside the Student Union, Abby Nash and Rena Frank, dressed as a pea pod and a pepper, respectively, extolled the virtues of the UMass Student Farm which grows food for CSAs and the campus dining commons.
Inside the festival tent, visitors made their own tie-dye T-shirts or took home fledgling sunflower and marigold seedlings. Later, 150 students took part in a social media-based scavenger hunt by following clues that were crafted to highlight the University’s efforts at sustainability.
On the Fine Arts Center terrace, dominated by the Robert Murray sculpture “Quinnipiac,” a Native American word for Connecticut River, hundreds of practitioners fanned out to take part in the third “Protect Our Breasts” benefit yogathon under the direction of nine instructors.