News Stories
Earth Day Festivities Set for April 18-22
Neumann students will roll up their sleeves and do their part for
Earth Day on Saturday, April 22, by participating in an all-day
campus clean-up. The Student Government Association (SGA) and the
Students for Environmental Awareness (SEA) club are organizing the
activity.
During the week before Earth Day, on Tuesday, April 18, students
will set aside the afternoon to have some 1960s-style fun and help
the Sisters of St. Francis of Philadelphia, the College's sponsoring
congregation. From 1 to 4 p.m. they will tie-dye Earth Day t-shirts
and paint flower pots in the campus Rose Garden. Carousel Toyota
will also demonstrate a hybrid car on campus during this time. From
4:45 to 7 p.m., student volunteers will plant perennials on the
grounds of Our Lady of Angels Convent, which is adjacent to the
Neumann campus.
On Thursday, April 20, staff of the Philadelphia Zoo will present
a program on endangered and threatened species from 3 to 4 p.m.
in the Schmidt Multipurpose Room. The Zoo on Wheels, with live animals,
will be in Living and Learning Center I for this hour.
The purpose of Earth Day is to celebrate nature's renewal and remind
people of the shared responsibility to protect the planet. The first
Earth Day was held on April 22, 1970. The successes of that day
led to it becoming a regular event. Gaylord Nelson, an environmental
activist in the U.S. Senate, took a leading role in organizing the
celebration to demonstrate popular political support for an environmental
agenda.
The "holiday" proved extremely popular in the United
States. The first Earth Day had participants in two thousand colleges
and universities, roughly ten thousand primary and secondary schools,
and hundreds of communities across America. Senator Nelson directly
credited the first Earth Day with persuading U.S. politicians that
environmental legislation had a substantial, lasting constituency.
Much legislation was passed by the Congress in the wake of the
1970 Earth Day, including the Clean Air Act, laws to protect drinking
water, wild lands and the ocean. The EPA was created within three
years of the first Earth Day.
The original Earth Day is celebrated in most countries on the vernal
equinox (around March 21) to mark the precise moment that spring
begins in the Northern Hemisphere and autumn in the Southern Hemisphere.
At this moment, night and day are equal length anywhere on Earth.
At the South Pole, the sun sets, bringing an end to the six-month-long
day, while at the North Pole, the sun rises, ending six months of
continuous darkness.
3/31/06
|
