More than 400 attend Step It Up rally

April 20, 2007

Courtesy of Colin Beckman

**FOR THE BEARS**: More than 400 people attended Saturday’s Step It Up rally to push Congress to reduce carbon emissions by 80 percent by 2050. Rep. Tom Allen, D-Maine, spoke at the rally, as did an aid to Sen. Susan Collins, R-Maine.

More than 400 members of the Bowdoin and Brunswick community attended Saturday's climate change rally on campus.

Clad in "Polar Bears Against Climate Change" T-shirts, the participants in Step It Up marched through downtown Brunswick. They also took a photo of themselves in front of the Hyde Plaza polar bear to send to the U.S. Congress. More than 1,500 signed letters were sent to five different Maine politicians.

The event was "a historic moment for Bowdoin, Brunswick, and for the nation," said Colin Beckman '07, one of the event's organizers.

Beckman said he hoped that the event would "be an inspiration to current Bowdoin students to carry on the work of campus-based action."

Polar Bears Against Climate Change co-heads Ruth Morrison '07 and Nastasha Horvath '07 said in a letter to the Orient that Bowdoin "can (and should) become a true leader in the movement to save the polar bear and fight climate change."

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