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A briefing paper written by senior Alyson Hartwig for her English class has resulted in a new student group called the Green Island being formed at Grand Island Senior High.
Hartwig said she decided to write her paper on global warming. In doing research, she came across the Web site for Focus the Nation, an organization that urged students to get together on a specific day to discuss the issue of global warming and what they could do about it.
Hartwig said she gathered students together in late February to watch an Earth Day TV program, "The 2 Percent Solution," which proposes reducing carbon emissions by 2 percent each year for the next 40 years.
Hartwig said she and the other students decided to form a new student organization in an effort to actually do something about the environment.
They decided one thing they wanted to do was to make students more aware about the environment, Hartwig said.
She noted that Grand Island Senior High's library only has two books about global warming. As a result, Hartwig said, the Green Island would like to get more materials into the library about global warming and the environment.
She said the group also asked art teachers at Senior High and the three middle schools to submit art to be displayed in Senior High's library the week of Earth Day, which is on April 22 this year.
The student organization is not contacting individual elementary schools in Grand Island, but is putting out an invitation to the general public to submit artwork for display in the Senior High library.
The Green Island also planned special activities during the week of Earth Day, including a showing of the Leonardo DiCaprio film, "The 11th Hour." She said one environmental film will be shown continuously each day during the week of Earth Day.
Green Island is working on these activities in cooperation with students in environmental sciences classes at Senior High.
Green Island and the environmental sciences classes are selling T-shirts with the inscription, "We Add Up."
Alyssa Hart said each T-shirt will have a different number. The idea is that one person cannot make a difference in the environment, but that if enough people work together on the environment, it "adds up" and a difference can be made.
Hartwig said Green Island will use its money to buy additional materials for the Senior High and middle school libraries on global warming and the environment.
The environmental sciences classes will use their portion of the proceeds from the T-shirts sales so it can put on displays at the Children's Groundwater Festival.
Green Island also will be putting a box in the Senior High library for anybody to bring empty ink cartridges. Green Island will then sell the ink cartridges to make money for the organization.
Although Hartwig and Hart are seniors, they hope Green Island will continue as a student organization next year after they graduate.
Both Hartwig and Hart note that there is a junior who is serving as a secretary for the group who is very organized and shows a lot of promise for being a leader of the group, ensuring that it continues next year.
Hartwig plans to attend the University of Nebraska at Omaha next year, where she plans to major in architectural engineering. She said her career goal is to work on "green buildings," which use less energy.
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