No Trash 4 Oil!!!

By Joseph Rago | Friday, June 11, 2004

Not content with Earth Day, Dartmouth's more industrious students decided to "reinvent" it. Hanover recently played host to "Reinventing Earth Week." The merriment featured hikes, clean-ups, teach-ins, speak-outs, green-outs, and shoot-outs, composting lessons, lectures, discussion panels, film series, trips by electric motor-bus to the organic farm, a "Big Green Environmental Festival," and a lavish masquerade ball. According to the 2004 Earth Week Committee (as explained to the Daily Dartmouth), the biggest challenges were "low attendance" and "mobilizing interest."

Some of the College's environmentalists went beyond and beyond for "Carry Your Trash Week!" The most hard-core of the hard guys carted their refuse around with them everywhere they went in order to "raise awareness" of how much waste a single human being generates. They wore t-shirts that broadcast "Ask Me Why I'm Carrying My Trash!" They would go hard, or go home.

Well, I thought, I have been meaning to raise some awareness. I acquired some official carry-your-trash wear, which was pretty trashy, even for the worst little sweat-shop in New Hampshire. More entertainingly, 'carrying' was obviously misspelled. I would be carring my trash around.

Needless to say, I completely soiled Carry Your Trash Week! and simply didn't participate, as I'd intended in the first place. Still, I had a short window of opportunity, and I was determined to raise some awareness, anywhere, whatever it took, so long as it wasn't too hard or physically exerting. I enlisted my friend John Paro into the ranks. We didn't have time to get him a poorly-made t-shirt, so he poorly made one of his own. It read, "No Trash 4 Oil!!!" Clearly, this campaign was going places.

We hauled several bags of basement left-overs out of an old-school fraternity dumpster, emptied them into clear liners so people could see what we were carring, and headed off. At this point, our demonstration became murkier. Were we pretending to care about the earth or were we carrying around cups, cans, and Keystone shells to make some larger statement? Were we proclaiming just how wasteful we actually are, or just pretending to? And what did No Trash 4 Oil!!! even mean? Paro added "What?" to his shirt to indicate that we didn't know either—or, in fact, care.

We proceeded down Mass Row and drew a few askance glances and confused looks, but no one seemed very interested in becoming more aware. It didn't help matters that we were simply raising awareness and not awareness of any Cause in particular. Things should have heated up near the Collis Center, as we were there near the dinner hour, but most bystanders continued to ignore us.

We realized what I imagine most people who do this sort of thing on a regular basis realize sooner or later: no one cares what you have to think. But we were determined to continue raising awareness; we didn't give up, so, like most activists in Hanover, we found ourselves standing idly on the corner at Wheelock and Main. If only we had thought to bring cardboard signs.

In a last ditch effort, Paro and I made our way across the Green, where we found slightly more success raising awareness. We explained that we were carrying trash to support the earth, as well as wind, water, fire, and heart. Most seemed bewildered by the contents of our bags. But hey, check us out, we're sweet. We ended the day with a quick sit-in for social justice, and tossed our trash into an errant recycling bin after basement mung started to drip down our calves.

I would think that our protest was just as effective as a normal protest, which is to say, completely ineffective. When we set off, we said that if we managed to make just one person aware, it would all be worth it. By the end of the day, we realized that if we managed to offend just one person, it was worth it.

No Trash 4 Oil!!!

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