When do these undergrads study for finals and stuff? Tonight was the kick-off event for USC Green Practices Initiative — an initiative to bring together all the faculty, student, and staff efforts for environment and sustainability issues.

Again, I’m super impressed by the energy of undergraduate students working about these issues. The Q&A ranged from addressing sustainable landscaping to encouraging LEED certified buildings to — you know — fair trade coffee ;)

That last bit, as you can guess, was my presentation. Fair trade coffee, I’d like to remind everyone once again, is not simply about fair prices for coffee farmers — although that’s obviously a v. important point. But fair trade certification also has very high environmental standards — 85% of fair trade certified coffee that comes into the US is also organic.

Anyway — There was overwhelming support for fair trade coffee at this event. Because — despite the initial appearance of openness and willingness to change on the part of Lore at USC Hospitality Services, we STILL don’t have fair trade coffee brewing at many of our cafes. The on-campus coffee shops that serve Starbucks coffee STILL haven’t switched to serving Cafe Estima.

So now, we’ve started a petition to get things moving. Why it’s gotten this hard is anyone’s guess — Like Sean of USC Costa Rica said at the event, it simply takes the people at USC Hospitality Services checking off a different box requesting a fair trade blend as opposed to the house blend. It doesn’t cost USC any more to do this. What’s the hold up?

Anyway. The Green Practices Initiative wasn’t the only socio-environmentally motivated event at USC tonight. MEChA put on an event called “Resistance to CAFTA,” discussing why there’ve been massive protests in El Salvador and Nicaragua, and Guatemala to CAFTA.

And on Friday, there’s a freecycling event at 6 pm in East McCarthy Quad, as well as a screening of Invisible Children at 6 pm in USC Norris Cinema Theatre.

Over at UCLA, there’ll be a big meeting at noon on Friday in Kerkoff Hall to discuss cutting Coke contracts at UCLA. Apparently, Coke’s sending 8 representatives to the meeting to defend the company. Call Gustavo for more info at 805.340.1758.

Seriously — When do these undergrads study for finals and stuff?

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