Heather Kangas, her green superhero cape covered with the season?s first fat snowflakes, had only one question for her fellow Towson University students scurrying past.
“You like winter?” she asked.
“Because all that could change.”
Dressed as “Captain Climate,” Kangas and other Towson students demonstrated in the snow Wednesday to raise awareness about global warming.
They plan to ask the Board of Regents, the governing board of the University System of Maryland, to make the state?s public colleges more energy-efficient and environmentally friendly.
Suggestions include turning off lights and computers when they aren?t needed, constructing buildings with green materials and buying locally grown food.
Students plan to present their proposal to the regents Feb. 15.
Sophomore Valerie Streets, dressed as a windmill, and freshman Lindsay Keeney, a smokestack hat atop her head, boxed each other with red gloves, acting out the fight between clean energy sources, such as wind and solar power, and dirtier ones such as coal.
Celebrities, including Al Gore and Leonardo DiCaprio, have pushed global warming into the consciousness of many college students, making a “world of difference” between the awareness among students last semester and this semester, said Kangas, a sophomore political science and metropolitan studies major.
So far, Towson students have collected 2,000 student signatures on a petition they hope grows to 13,000 systemwide, said Erica Stout, a sophomore studying sociology.
Stout helped launch the Maryland Student Climate Coalition, which represents students from most of the system?s 11 universities.
Students at other Maryland colleges also demonstrated or planned to this week.
At the University of Maryland, students constructed 9-foot wind turbines, while Frostburg State University held a “black-out,” where students shut lights off to conserve energy.
