The Earth Day celebration during last weekend has some republicans on campus crying foul.
The College Republican Alliance, upset at being asked to leave the Parade Ground Earth Day festival, said Tuesday even though members were contributing to the event, they were not allowed to participate.
The Student Environmental Action Coaltion, the student organization sponsoring the event, said many Earth Day attendees complained about CRA’s presence.
“If there hadn’t been so many people complaining, I wouldn’t have done anything,” said SEAC treasurer Lee Guilbeau.
CRA handed out pamphlets and flyers that were contrary to SEAC’s position on the environment, bringing an air of negativity to an event planned as a celebration, Guilbeau said.
“We were just wanting to have a good time,” he said.
Andrew Whitley, a CRA member who was present at the festival, said they passed out flyers advocating free trade and tax incentives for corporations to cut back on pollutants instead of mandatory environmental regulations. One flyer, “The Skeptical Environmentalist,” said many environmental groups exaggerate their claims of water and air pollution, population control and forest deterioration.
“Republicans have a bad reputation about the environment,” Whitley said.
By advocating free trade, people get richer, which allows them to afford environmental reform, Whitley said.
“The basic gist is that traditional command-and-control doesn’t work,” Whitley said.
The dispute started when CRA passed out jambalaya on styrofoam plates but did not bring recycling bins for trash disposal, Guilbeau said. Styrofoam is not biodegradable, and when it begins to decompose, it releases harmful gases to the ozone layer, he said.
Recycling and composting were two aspects of environmentalism the Earth Day festival was trying to promote, Guilbeau said.
As part of the Earth Day festivities, people signed a petition asking Chartwell’s to quit serving food on styrofoam plates and cups because of the damage styrofoam does to the environment.
Guilbeau said CRA was not there to contribute.
“They know how we feel about styrofoam,” he said.
Whitley agreed the organization should not have brought styrofoam plates but felt the Earth Day organizers had ulterior motives for asking them to leave.
“We got kicked out because it wasn’t a popular opinion,” Whitley said. “They said we weren’t doing anything pertinent to Earth Day. We were. It just wasn’t what their version of environmentalism dogma is.”
Whitley said SEAC’s claims that the event was apolitical are false. The Green Party, Progressive Student Alliance and the Coalition Against the War in Iraq were present, and those groups traditionally favor environmental causes. They were just trying to pick a fight, he said.
“We came out with the intention of positively contributing to the event, and we were not allowed to because we are not in line with extreme environmental groups.” Whitely said. “It was not popular with the people who were there.”
Guilbeau said the republicans’ claim that their free speech was inhibited is not true because they have many more outlets to express their opinion. The republicans were the minority at the event, but they were a minority within the environmental minority.
“They said they were the minority, but liberals are the minority in this country,” Guilbeau said. “They’re in Free Speech Alley every week. That’s their free speech.”