Students focus on sustainability

By: Carla Mancebo

Posted: 4/17/07

Climate change, unfair trade and social injustice, are they recycled ideas or inconvenient truths?

San Jose State University's Sustainability Week will host four days of events dedicated to engage students both environmentally and socially.

"Sustainability is about long-term planning and thinking ahead and only using as many resources as our planet can regenerate," said Amie Frisch, the director the Environmental Resource Center.

Frisch said a sustainable earth would be a place where laborers are paid fairly and food is grown organically. Frisch said food is people's basic connection to earth and encourages students to take part in the cooking lesson using organic food at the dining commons at 6 p.m. on Tuesday.

Nora Ly, a member of the campus group Sustainable Markets and Responsible Trade Project and an alumna of SJSU, said students could start learning how to support the sustainability of the earth for future generations by attending a speech by former sweatshop worker Carmencita Abad's speech on Tuesday at 12:30 p.m. in the Dr. Martin Luther King Library.

"There is a lack of awareness of a broader world outside of our own," Ly said. "You can make a world of difference, it just takes tiny steps."

Ly said students can take those steps toward change by patronizing small businesses, like a local coffee shop that sells Fair Trade coffee.

Fair trade activist, Candi Smucker discussed the concept of ethical trade yesterday and a discussion panel on fair trade, "Are we Fair Yet," will be held at the Student Union on Thursday afternoon.

Amit Raikar, also a member of the Sustainable Markets and Responsible Trade Project and an alumnus of SJSU, see Sustainability Week and campus Earth Day as a way for students to learn how to create a lifestyle that is healthy for themselves, the world and the future.

"We are not just people who will sit at our homes and forget about the person next to us," Raikar said. "It is about a California citizen thinking as a world citizen."

The non-profit group, Ten Thousand Villages, will bring its environmentally-sustainable produce and Fair Trade certified crafts from around the world to the Seventh Street Plaza on Tuesday until Thursday.

"The bottom line is a person can feel good about getting something that is a fair trade craft," Raikar said, "unlike any other retail store where the final seller makes the profit and the artisan gets very little."

SJSU's Earth Day on Wednesday will bring organic produce vendors and a tree planting ceremony at Washington Square Hall in memory of the founder of national Earth Day, Gaylord Nelson former Wisconsin state senator and alumnus of SJSU.

A concert with the band Resistant Me will be held outside the Student Union on Tuesday at noon.

Raikar said many students are apathetic to concerns like the ethical treatment of workers because the issues seem far away and big. Though, with the real-life experiences of some of the speakers students will began to grasp the relevance.

"They will get a real understanding or connection through the heart instead of through their mind," Raikar said.