Prospective IU students can expect a lot from their tour of Indiana University Bloomington – a showcasing of facilities, an inside look into student life, and a chance to see the beauty of the campus first-hand. But lately they are also getting the unexpected during tours–a group of student protesting around popular sites on campus.  

The student-led group “Students for a New Green World” has been protesting at heavily trafficked areas around campus such as Showalter Fountain and the Sample Gates to encourage Indiana University to begin creating a climate action plan.  

Over the past year, Bloomington has been beginning to see examples of jarring weather patterns that are linked to the climate crisis.  The most recent example is the winter storm that hit Indiana early February.  The day before, temperatures reached 60 degrees with students spending time outdoors, but were all prepared to spend the next day at home looking out frosted windows.  

The issue, however, is not the warm front – as warm weather is expected before midlatitude storms.  How quickly the cold front is heating up is what concerns experts for not only humanity, but all life on Earth.

“Yes, the warm air is getting warmer, but the cold air is getting warmer faster,” said IU Associate Professor of Earth and Atmospheric Sciences Paul Staten, “and just like these brief warm spells can throw you and me off, the warming winter climate is going to throw off plants, animals, and people who have built infrastructure and communities around a 20th century climate.”

Students for a New Green World (SNGW) has been working on bringing attention to the issue of climate change and pushing for IU to create a policy as soon as possible.  

“It’s quite concerning that not only is climate change a future issue, which is often seen through the lens of how climate change is addressed through policy, but generally climate change is happening now.  It’s been the case for marginalized communities, low income communities, communities of color across the globe.  They’ve been feeling these effects for years,” said Cooper Sykes, Vice President of Students for a New Green World.

Sykes and other members of SNGW have met with administrators at IU, pushing for a policy change and have been met with rejection and finger pointing. 

“We as students were given this image of ‘if you come to IU… you’ll be able to work with all this great faculty and use the facilities that we have on campus and really make a change’… yes, we’d really like to be doing things for the greater good but you guys literally won’t listen to us,” said SNGW member Sophie Hall.

SGNW plans to continue protesting around campus until Indiana University joins seven of the other Big Ten school with a climate action plan.