Going "green" has been a hot trend for a while now. On Wednesday, the campus took part in "Greenspiration" week - an effort to raise awareness of the need for a cleaner environment. Eliav Bitan, CC'09, said "The main idea of Greenspiration is to get students that aren't already involved in environmentalism to understand how the things they are interested in relate to environmental issues. We also want to, within the environmental community on campus, give it a sense of re-energizing and re-focusing." Perry Sasnett, CC'11, said "I think the main idea behind Greenspiration is uniting all sorts of different campus groups to promote sustainability."

Organizers planned special green dinners at John Jay and Hewitt to celebrate Earth Day. Goldi Juer, Director of Operations for Barnard Dining Services, said "We decided to partner with the Eco Reps and do a special dinner celebrating local sustainable ingredients. We also wanted to do a farmer's market and basically this is a spread of different fruits and vegetables that are grown in either New York or New Jersey."

Other events throughout the week included discussions on environmentalism and walking tours of Harlem's gardens. Sarah Brafman, CC'10, said "The nature of the events is that we wanted to have social events where students can have a good time and project the view that living in an environmental lifestyle can be really fun. I think as a whole Columbia has a long way to go in terms of larger sistemic environmental sustainability, but I look forward to working to helping with this sistemic change."

Greenspiration week may be over for now, but Columbia students plan to continue promoting green issues to provide a greener campus.