New recycling bins, alumni office projects add to campus-wide efforts
Celebrations surrounding Belmont University’s hosting of the 2008 Town Hall Presidential Debate this fall won’t merely be colored in red, white and blue as the university dedicates its efforts to make the event a healthy shade of green as well. Staff members involved in welcoming more than 3,000 campaign workers and media to campus in October are working on a number of ideas to ensure Debate08 promotes environmental sustainability as a vital aspect of good citizenship and an important part of any event planning.
Pamela Johnson, Belmont’s Director of Strategic Marketing and Special Initiatives, said, “Protecting the environment and resource conservation aren’t just huge topics for the candidates to tackle this election season. At Belmont University, these are important issues we’re addressing daily in classrooms and across campus. My hope is that the 2008 Town Hall Presidential Debate serves as another step forward in our ongoing ‘Belmont Goes Green’ campaign while also inspiring our campus and community with creative examples of how we can all do our part to protect and conserve the environment.”
Several debate-related programs are planned for students and the community to provide insight into the politics of the environment, including Dr. Kelly Tiller’s address on “Economics and the Environment: The Biofuel Controversy” and Peter Kareiva’s talk on “Conservation Strategies that Work.” In addition, to curb paper output, the university is creating an Electronic Press Kit (EPK) for visiting media to use, placing materials like press releases, contact lists and background information on a one gigabyte flash drive rather than using printed pieces.
The EPK will be inserted into a polypropylene bag that is made of recycled materials and is fully recyclable. Plus, the bag itself can be re-used, eliminating the need for plastic bags at grocery stores and other outlets. Identifying tags placed on the bags will use hand-made seed paper, which can literally be planted like normal seeds when removed from the bag. Some paper is being used for Debate08 letterhead, but it is being manufactured by Domtar Cougar, which is certified by the Forest Stewardship Council as well as being made chlorine free, lignin free and acid-free. In addition, all of the generators being used to power the Media Filing Center will be using an environmentally friendly biodiesel blend.

Klay Kelley, Belmont University’s student body president, will address approximately 100 student government leaders, representing more than one million students from 50 universities nationwide, when they meet in Nashville Oct. 5-7 to discuss healthcare issues.
The student leaders are meeting under the banner of SHOUTAmerica, a new non-profit group created to engage young Americans in the debate over healthcare. The group will convene at the Scarritt-Bennett Center, just blocks from the Oct. 7 presidential debate in Belmont’s Curb Event Center.
“This year it will cost $2.4 trillion to fund our healthcare system, which is the world’s most expensive, yet this same system ranks 37th in terms of quality,” said Landon Gibbs, 26, executive director and co-founder of SHOUTAmerica. “It’s clear we need changes that address the rising cost of healthcare – and we believe young people have to lead that discussion, because it is our future that is at risk.”
Conference participants come from 50 different universities, including Harvard, NYU, Columbia, Vanderbilt, Texas and Missouri. At the event, they will meet with U.S. Sen. Bob Corker, R-Tenn., U.S. Rep. Jim Cooper, D-Tenn., and Dr. Ezekiel Emanuel, chair of Clinical Bioethics at the Clinical Center of the National Institutes of Health, former member of President Clinton’s Health Care Task Force and author of Healthcare, Guaranteed: A Simple, Secure Solution for America.

Journalism Veterans to Discuss ‘Ethical Responsibility in an Election Year’
The Center for Business Ethics and the new Century Journalism Program will host a lively dialogue between John L. Seigenthaler, award-winning journalist and founder of the First Amendment Center, and his son John M. Seigenthaler, partner and CEO of Seigenthaler Public Relations New York and former NBC news anchor. The dialogue, titled “Ethical Responsibility in an Election Year: Is the Media Helping or Hurting?,” is scheduled for Fri., Sept. 26 at 10 a.m. in the Frist Lecture Hall located on the fourth floor of Belmont’s Gordon E. Inman Center.
The Seigenthalers will share an ethical perspective on the media’s coverage of the presidential election and will engage in a dialogue on positive and negative examples of ethics and media coverage. They will also answer questions from the audience consisting of Belmont University students and the larger Middle Tennessee community. This event is free, but seating is limited. Registration is available by clicking here.
John L. Seigenthaler founded the First Amendment Center in 1991 with the mission of creating national discussion, dialogue and debate about First Amendment rights and values. A former president of the American Society of Newspaper Editors, Seigenthaler served for 43 years as an award-winning journalist for The Tennessean, Nashville’s daily newspaper. At his retirement he was editor, publisher and CEO and retains the title chairman emeritus. In 1982, he became founding editorial director of USA Today and served in that position for a decade, retiring from both the Nashville and national newspapers in 1991.