Benefit concert goes green

Together with the Office of Residential Life, UCLA is hosting the second annual Live Aid Concert tonight.

The motto of the concert is “Blue + Gold = Green,” and this year’s focus is sustainability.

Held tonight at 7 p.m. in the Northwest Campus Auditorium, a $1 donation can be made at the otherwise free event to help conservation projects for TreePeople and Heal the Bay in Los Angeles.

The concert will consist of several UCLA performance groups, including Bruin Harmony, Signature, Awaken and MEDley.

A local Los Angeles band The Getty Rocks, led by a UCLA geology graduate Ron Schmidtling, will also play environmentally themed music.

“(Schmidtling) is a major proponent of conservation of the environment, science education, and thereby Live Aid,” Alan Lewis, protect coordinator and a fourth-year civil engineering major, said.

Along with the concert, several different local and student organizations will be present with information about their cause and what students can do to help, including Heal the Bay, TreePeople, Forum for Energy Economics and Development, Engineers Without Borders, Institute of the Environment, UCLA E3 (Economy, Ecology, Equity), UCLA Education for Sustainable Living Program, ORL, ResTV, Jet Blue, UCLA Sustainability and Leaders in Sustainability.

The concept of Live Aid is to “unite people in a common interest, whether they know about it or not, and support a cause,” Lewis said.

As project coordinator, he took the concept of Live Aid and made environmental awareness the focus this year.

He said he hopes the event will help encourage and inspire people to bring change in their communities and in the environment.

Susie Boyland, a first-year computer science major, said the concert is a fun way to get students informed about the green movement and involved.

Boyland said she believes the concert will be effective since a lot of the environmental groups are going to be present to give information to the students.

She thinks having events that attract students’ attention, but also inform them about the environment is a great way to make them more aware, she said.

“The green movement is important to me because if we don’t do something about it then eventually our planet will become unlivable,” Boyland said.

The ORL has become increasingly involved in the green movement, Lewis said.

Over the past couple of years they have implemented suitability-themed floors, awarding prizes to residents floors that are the most sustainable throughout the year.

Also, students can win a pizookie party for their dorm building floor by submitting a video on the theme “Blue + Gold = Green” or by being the floor with the highest collective donation.

“UCLA is becoming increasingly involved in what has been hailed as the Green Movement,” according to a UCLA statement regarding the concert.

As part of UCLA becoming a larger part of the movement, UCLA Sustainability has implemented a new program this year – half a dozen different bins for recycling and trash as well as having volunteers at events show event goers which bin to put their trash in, said Alison Hewitt, a UCLA spokeswoman.

Lewis said UCLA has indeed been becoming a larger proponent to the sustainability of our environment and the concert hopes to continue to make an even larger impact.