By Li KeSpecial to the Tsinghua News Center
The Green Club of Tsinghua University, the popular student environmental group, has announced the opening of the “Green Fund” for activities and opened the club’s official website.
The fund has already received its first donation—from club advisor Du Pengfei.
These developments were made public recently at the club’s 10th anniversary celebration, which was followed by an academic forum titled “Youth, Responsibility, and a Conservation-minded Society.”
The Green Club in Tsinghua, founded in April 1995, is one of the first environmental student associations formed in the nation’s college s and universities. Under the guidance of the club motto, “Actions speak louder than words,” the association has sponsored quite a number of activities.
One of the best-known is the project to “Reduce Cards and Save Trees,” which was launched in 1998 and has since become a traditional activity of the club. During major holidays, especially Christmas, the club members call for students to send their greetings via emails, and reduce the number of cards used.
But cutting back on cards is not the only tradition here. Club member Cen Xu put out a call on Tsinghua’s electronic bulletin board for students to adopt the 100 bird nests hung on trees outside Gongziting, the former imperial courtyard which houses the university administration offices. Students can name their own bird nests, and feed the birds by putting food into the nests from time to time. In this way, participants can show their affection for birds and the environment.
“This might become a tradition in Tsinghua,” said Cen Xu. “No one wouldn’t like to become a trailblazer.”
Though the activities are simple, they are an indispensable part of the big picture.
“To build a green university is an important part of building a first-class university in the world,” Tsinghua Vice President Zhang Fengchang said in a speech at the anniversary forum
Zhang is also the person in charge of the green office, which was instituted when the university was authorized as the Green Univeristy Model by the State Environmental Protection Administration (SEPA) in 1998.
The Green Club, as a student association, was guided and supported by the green office, and has made lots of contribution to the environmental protection on campus. They appealed to the public to abandon disposable wooden chopsticks, introduced trash classification and recycling in dorm buildings, and initiated the program which calls for students to reduce the use of plastic bags.
As a result of its dedication, the Green Club has been chosen one of the ten best student associations in Tsinghua eight times.
“Every teacher or student should act as a seed. Let the idea of a conservation-minded society take root in their mind, and spread to the general public through social contact,” said Zhu Xingxiang, the head of the environment evaluation office in SEPA.
“When it comes to environmental protection, Tsinghua is the best university, and the most standardized,” Zhu said.
To construct a conservation-minded society is one of the most frequently mentioned national goals of China recently. In response to this, three teams of students from Tsinghua Green Club launched a survey on the effect of the South-to-North water diversion project on ordinary people in Danjiangkou, Zhengzhou and Handan, three towns along the middle line of the three branches of the project.
Earlier this year, the association underwent an organizational reformation. The presidium, which used to consist of mainly undergraduates, now has five doctoral candidates, one graduate student and three undergraduates. And a board of directors, who are mainly former presidents of the Green Club, has been founded. The association has adjusted itself to enhance further cooperation with organizations and businesses outside campus.
Donations can be made to the Green Club through the branch of Beijing Commercial Bank in Tsinghua.
