By: Huntre Keip ’20, staff writer
Each year, Lebanon Valley College’s Sustainability Advisory Committee holds a list of events in celebration of Earth Day.
The celebration of awareness begins with the Sustainability Oratorical Contest, which took place on April 4 in the Bishop Library Atrium. Interested students submitted their scripts and brief bibliographies and the top contestants were chosen to present their oration for this event. The contestants were judged by a panel of four judges within in the LVC community.
This year’s topic was “Explain a global environmental issue and discuss how our local behaviors and actions contribute to it. What are the best ways to address this issue, in your view?” Students were asked to follow this topic, but they were able to explore different topics and variations while discussing the environment.
Five contestants participated including Courtney Betsock, Kristen Eberhardt, Keri Jones, Alexis Morace and Lauren Wick. Each female’s presentation covered a variety of topics involving environmental efforts created by the College, possible pollution in the Annville area and pollution effects of the world’s oceans.
“I do not want to watch the world drown in garbage,” Courtney Betsock, a freshman physical therapy major, said.
Betsock’s proposed donating old clothing and not taking an excessive amount of food while eating in the Mund Dining Hall. She stressed the importance of decreasing an individual’s amount of garbage that goes into growing landfills across the state.
Kristen Eberhardt, a senior digital communications major, realized her own decision on environmental change when she discovered how long it took for a single straw to decompose. She decided to write her oration about an individual’s effect on pollution in oceans.
“When one person uses a single straw, that straw takes over 200 years to decompose,” Eberhardt said. “5.52 trillion pieces of plastic are in the world’s oceans.”
The winners of the 2018 Sustainability Oratorical Contest are: First place, Kristen Eberhardt; second place, Courtney Betsock and third place, Keri Jones. The prizes included an iPad, $100 gift card and a $50 gift card.
“Just remember, you are the change,” Eberhardt said.