Stanford Report, April 21, 2004

STUDENTS FOR A SUSTAINABLE Stanford will celebrate Earth Week 2004 in a big way with panels, an "Earth Day Extravaganza" at White Plaza and an art show at the Tresidder Union Coffee House. Tonight, former U.S. Rep. PETE MCCLOSKEY (R-Calif.), an Earth Day co-founder, and LARRY GOULDER, the Shuzo Nishihara Professor in Environmental and Resource Economics and a senior fellow at the Stanford Institute for International Studies, will appear on a panel to discuss "Is Green on the Agenda? Perspectives on the Current State of U.S. Environmental Policy." At a White Plaza fair on Thursday from noon to 2 p.m., campus cultural, environmental and political groups, along with administrative and academic departments, will sponsor booths covering a spectrum of topics related to environmental activities and policy. A full schedule can be found at http://earthweek2004.stanford.edu.

OVER THE LAST SIX YEARS, CHRISTY SMITH, library specialist, and JULIE CAIN, library operations manager, and a small army of volunteers have rescued the Victorian-era Arizona Garden in the Arboretum from ruin. They've protected some of the remaining cacti and succulents planted by Jane and Leland Stanford and added hundreds more donated plants. Hours of hard labor have uncovered the original serpentine-rock outlines -- half-buried over the years, partly as a result of maintenance trucks being driven over them -- that marked the old beds, which lay beneath layers of dirt and leaves. Some old habits die hard, it seems: Employees still are crushing vintage rocks while driving vehicles on an unpaved road that skirts the garden, reports Smith, who also works part time for Facilities Operations. Smith is asking that all staff be mindful of the delicate rockwork and avoid the area as much as possible.

A VACUUM CLEANER, A PACKAGE OF aluminum foil, a bike helmet, a fan, a portable CD player, a pair of blue sandals and a polka-dotted bag are just a few of the items that have cycled in and out of a new Stanford Exchange Store that has opened on the top floor of the Old Union, above the Nitery. The student-run store (in student parlance, the SEx Store) is accepting donations of personal items and office supplies from campus community members and making them available for free to others. The main goal of the store is to promote reuse on campus and reduce consumption, said student CHRISTINE CHIU, one of the store's organizers, in an e-mail soliciting donations. "Why throw away items that can be reused by someone else? Why buy something new when you can get it for free?" The store is open Monday through Thursday from noon to 2 p.m.

Write to Barbara Palmer at barbara.palmer@stanford.edu or mail code 2245 or call her at 724--6184.

Barbara Palmer