Day at the Bay: A beach clean-up close to home

Aerial view of Biscayne Bay Campus, where a Day in the Bay takes place in order to maintain the environment pristine. Photo courtesy of FIU via Creative Commons’ flickr.

Juan Endara/Contributing Writer

Volunteers will take a stroll along Biscayne Bay Nov. 9, not in leisure, but with a mission – to fill their bags with garbage they collect from the surrounding area.

The Day on the Bay, hosted by Student Government Association, is an annual event held at Biscayne Bay Campus to bring students, faculty and staff together in an effort to clean up the campus’ surrounding area.

Fu Zhou Wu, SGA-BBC president, said her goal is to participate like any other student. She wants to make the campus look cleaner so everyone feels comfortable in that environment.

Accordig to Zhou, Day on the Bay has become a BBC tradition, with the event now entering its sixth year.

“This event creates a community engagement to make students contribute and eventually be proud of what we have in this campus, since we have a very unique campus, which is the bay. [There’s] no where else where students would have the opportunity to have a campus like this,” Zhou said.

SGA extends the event’s invitation to the entire campus community because it is “Panther pride” to participate in campus activities, said Zhou.

“As a student, you should take pride of what you have and become involved. I’m not going to tell you if you have more important things to do, to leave your responsibilities, but if you have the time, I highly encourage you to come,” Zhou said.

Larisa Adames, SGA clerk and organizer of Day on the Bay, said that students will learn new venues to protect the environment.

“Day on the Bay is more about community service. We want students to get involved to ensure the campus is clean,” Adames said.

According to Adames, the event is not only beneficial to the University, but also to the North Miami community.

“We receive high school students as visitors in our campus where they get the experience to see how the environment is at the university,” Adames said.

Adames said most importantly the event will give students a reason to better appreciate BBC.

“If for whatever reason they haven’t got the opportunity to go out because of their occupancies, they will have the opportunity to see how beautiful it is out there. They will feel like they are getting something back [and] they will appreciate the campus more,” Adames said.

Richard Azimov, vice president of BBC-SGA, stressed the importance of participating in Day on the Bay lies in becoming more environmentally conscious while making the campus a cleaner place.

“We are fortunate that we are here on the bay and it’s our responsibility and our duty to keep it nice and clean. We also have animal life at the bay, so we want to make sure they are not threatened by a contaminated environment,” Azimov said.

Students can register Saturday, 8:30 a.m., behind the BBC pool. The cleanup will run from 9 a.m. to noon.

“We want to encourage all of the community that if they are on the bay, to not throw the garbage in the water because it will eventually go somewhere,” Adames said.

-news@fiusm.com