#shileen b

[loboslovebees]

Lobos Love Bees: Discussion

The event booth at the Earth Day Sustainability Expo went better then we could have ever planned. We were able to teach students, staff, and visitors at UNM about the risks of pesticides and their use on campus. We were able to meet with our peers and educate them as well as be educated by them as well; it was a great event of shared knowledge. The experience was an eye-opening event to the community at UNM and I think it was very successful at addressing the goals of our project; educating and receiving signatures for the Lobos Love Bees petition to ride the UNM campus of pesticides. It was a good experience to put the methods we chose (Creswell, 2013, Dahl, 2003) in effect at the booth to test their success. We discovered that shock imagery was very successful as it drew in a lot of people to our booth. The image of the marketplace with honey bee-dependent crops and another image of the same marketplace, but without the crops we rely on honeybees for (see Fig 1) was a great conversation started across all demographics. The image was quick and simple and drove home the important point that honeybees are important for our environment, which was a great way of persuading people to sign the petition. Another great image we used was the image of the honeybee with the caption” if we die, we’re taking you with us” (see Fig 2). This image helped bring in a variety of audiences. The people I talked to that were interested in this image didn’t really know what it meant; they just thought it was cute. Once I gave a quick explanation of what the image was trying to get across, that bees are at a great risk and we are dependent on them for many of our food crops, they immediately became interested, wanted to learn more, and were excited to sign the petition to rid the UNM campus of pesticides, a large factor against bee populations. These images and our banners and signage were a great drawing point to our audience and really helped captivate them. It was great to see everyone’s reactions to the signage and then be able to talk with them.

Our booth was successful because it was an important step in getting rid of pesticides on campus. Although the ultimate goal is to rid the campus of pesticides and make it as pollinator friendly as possible, our event helped give this idea a foot in the door as it provided the petition with 297signatures. Our event also brought awareness to the issue of pesticides on campus and began the conversation about getting rid of them, which is an important step create support for the cause. Hopefully the people we talked to will now stay active with the cause and support it through all of it’s instances; as the petition makes it to the plant department, as the Plant Department and Sustainability Program work together to create different forms of keeping plants healthy and weeds out of the landscape, and as the pollinators enter the campus to live harmoniously at UNM.

As the pesticide-free campus movement begins at UNM it is important to create as much support as possible. This means educating the population at UNM by talking about it with friends and family, as well as constantly educating ourselves. Staying up to date on studies on the effects of pesticides is an important way of keeping ourselves aware of our surroundings and therefore more aware of environment and ways of protecting it. This event at the Earth Day Sustainability Expo is just the beginning down the road towards a pesticide-free campus that is pollinator friendly. But once this goal is reached, UNM will enter into the ranks of the few great schools that have gone pesticide free (Abercrombie, 2005) and be a leader in the world of sustainability. Hopefully this event will serve as an example for future events towards this or any other great sustainability cause.

Fig 1. Image used at the event booth at the Earth Day Sustainability Expo an April 22nd, 2014. The image shows a grocery store with crops provided by pollination by honeybees and shows the same grocery store without these crops.

Fig 2. Image used at the event booth at the Earth Day Sustainability Expo on April 22nd, 2014. The image shows a honeybee with a truth-revealing caption: “If we die, we’re taking you with us.”

Abercrombie, S. (2005). Pesticide-Free Campuses. Environmental Practice, 7(01), 10-12.

Creswell, J. W. (2013). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage.

Dahl, Darren W., Kristina D. Frankenberger, and R. V. Manchandra. (2003). “Does it pay to shock? Reactions to shocking and nonshocking advertising content among university students.” JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH-NEW YORK-43.3 (2003): 268-280.

[loboslovebees]

Lobos Love Bees: Results

At the beginning of the Earth Day Sustainability Expo the petition was at 452 signatures. The expo began on April 23rd at 10 o’clock in the morning and ended a 2 o’clock in the afternoon. This gave our booth a total of four hours to educate student, staff, and visitors about pesticides on campus and convince them to sign our petition for a pesticide-free campus Within these four hours we stood underneath our booth talking to those who were came by our booth by their own interest, we also stood outside of our booth asking anyone who passed by if they had time to talk about pesticides and honeybees or if they would like to sign our petition, and we also took up the extent that the expo reached in front of the Student Union Building that day walking around with the petition to reach an even larger audience. We worked for four hours straight and the end result was a total of 749 signatures for the day. 31 of the signatures were recorded on the online petition and 266 of the signatures were received on paper. At the expo we received a total of 297 signatures. This means that we received about 74 signatures per hour at the expo. The petition was online for 25 days before the expo, which is a total of 600 hours. This means that the online petition received less than one signature per hour, meaning that our event booth was 74 times more successful per hour than the online petition, which was being spread through social media, listservs, emails, and word of mouth. Overall, our booth was a success because it did receive a large amount of signatures within four hours.             The shock imagery we chose to use proved to be very successful for our booth as well. There were multiple people who either stopped to laugh or take a picture of the image of the bee that had the caption “If we die, we’re taking you with us” (see Fig 1). There were also several people who were taken aback by the poster that named the 31 different pesticides and herbicides that are used on UNM campus (see Fig 2), whom started conversations and asked questions about the large amount and different types that were listed. The image of the marketplace with honey bee-dependant crops vs. a marketplace without the crops we rely on honeybees for demonstrated the importance of honeybees, especially to those who had not heard of pesticides, colony collapse disorder, or our reliance on honeybees before (see fig 3). Overall, the shock imagery we used helped give our booth an edge that was hard to ignore, therefore resulting in a larger audience reached and more signatures for the petition.

Fig 1. Shock imagery used at the Earth Day Sustainability Expo on April 22nd, 2014. the image is of a honeybee with a truth-revealing caption, “If we die, we’re taking you with us”.

Fig 2. Shock imagery used at the Earth Day Sustainability Expo on April 22nd, 2014.The poster lists all 31 pesticides and herbicides used on UNM Campus.

Fig 3. Shock imagery used at the Earth Day Sustainability Expo on April 22nd, 2014. this image shows a grocery store with crops provided by pollination by honeybees and a grocery store without those crops.

[loboslovebees]

Lobos Love Bees: Methods

To execute our project most effectively, we chose to use a quantitative approach. By using a quantitative approach we would be able to accurately measure how many signatures we received and therefore be able to calculate our success as a booth (Creswell, 2013). The aim of our booth was to educate the students, staff, and visitors at the Earth Day and Sustainability Expo, but also to receive signatures for the pesticide-free campus petition. Since this was the aim of our project, we believed choosing a quantitative approach would be the most effective way to evaluate the effectiveness of our booth. We also use aspects of the qualitative approach, mostly from the rich experiences that occurred during our booth’s duration at the expo. Reactions from some viewers to our imagery (which I will explain below) were really interesting on gauging the success of our booth’s strategy of imagery and pairing of information.

After obtaining permission from the Sustainability Expo director Jessica Rowland to present our booth at the Earth Day event we then created the booth we believed would be the most creative, effective, and eye-catching. Our booth had humble beginnings, with a tent, a table, and a couple of chairs. At our booth we also had set up 2 computers that were linked to the change.org site that help the online version of the pesticide-free campus. On top of our e-petitions, we also had hard copies of the petition available, so we could see if there was a difference of viewers being more susceptible to one form of petitions than the other (Nchise, 2012).       

From there, we decided it would be important to have a demonstration of the types of crops that honeybees provide us with, so we had real examples of lettuce, almonds, black berries, etc. (See Fig 1). This imagery was used for those who eat these items on a daily or weekly basis (Hinds & Sparks, 2008), therefore, creating an identity connection of the viewer to the booth and its petition’s goals. Another way we created identity connection was through a large banner that introduced viewers to the objective of our booth. We created a large yellow banner that stated “ Lobos <3 Bees” (See Fig 2). We chose to indicate UNM’s mascot as the lover of bees because people have strong identity ties to their mascots (Vanderford, 1996).  We hoped that as the saying goes; ‘everyone’s a lobo’, would translate to everyone loves bees and help create an immediate identification with our booth.

We then decided to create some shock images that would ensure viewers to give our booth a moment of their time (Dahl, 2003). Our first image was a poster with the complete list of names of pesticides and herbicides used on UNM campus (see Fig 3). This information alone led to many people to stop and ask more questions about the extent of use, area, and types of each of the chemicals. Other posters included a simple, bold sign that read “Pesticide-Free Campus! Sign the Petition!” (see Fig 4). Our two other posters included quick facts about how many crops depend on honeybees and the long list of crops that we would lose if the honeybees were to die off (see Fig 5, Fig 6). This information was supported by an image of a marketplace with honey bee-dependant crops and another image of the same marketplace, but without the crops we rely on honeybees for (see Fig 7). The difference is very obvious and brought a reality to the situation that viewers may have not understood before. There was also an image of a cute cartoon honeybee and underneath it reads “If we die, we’re taking you with us” (see Fig 8) This grim, but somewhat truth revealing image brought great attention to our booth.

I think shock images really improved the effectiveness of our booth by catching the eye of many passersby, with the bright colors we chose for posters and along with shocking facts/images ended up really helpful in creating a captivated, engaged, and definitely interested audience. This audience was then given the facts and had all their questions answered by members of our group; anything to obtain signatures. It was important that all of our group members knew all of the important facts relating to pesticides because prior knowledge is an important aspect in creating credibility for your views (Kerstetter, 2004) and therefore  important for keeping a viewer’s interest and in turn receiving their signature.

Fig 1. The event booth at the Earth Day Sustainability Expo on April 22nd, 2014. The booth exhibits posters with various facts about honeybees and pesticides and shows some real-life examples of foods that honeybees provide us with.

Fig 2. The event booth at the Earth Day Sustainability Expo on April 22nd, 2014: showing the Lobos <3 Bees banner.

Fig 3. A list of pesticides and herbicides used on UNM campus: presented at the event booth at the Earth Day Sustainability Expo on April 22nd, 2014.

Fig 4. A poster presented at the event booth at the Earth Day Sustainability Expo on April 22nd, 2014.

Fig. 5 A poster presented at the event booth at the Earth Day Sustainability Expo on April 22nd, 2014.

Fig 6. A poster presented at the event booth at the Earth Day Sustainability Expo on April 22nd, 2014.

Fig 7. An image used on a poster presented at the event booth at the Earth Day Sustainability Expo on April 22nd, 2014. The image shows a honeybee with a truth-capturing caption “If we die, we’re taking you with us.”

Fig 8. An image used on a poster presented at the event booth at the Earth Day Sustainability Expo on April 22nd, 2014. The image shows a grocery store with crops produced by honeybees and the same grocery store with those crops missing form the selection.

Works Cited:

Creswell, J. W. (2013). Research design: Qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods approaches. Sage.

Dahl, Darren W., Kristina D. Frankenberger, and R. V. Manchandra. “Does it pay to shock? Reactions to shocking and nonshocking advertising content among university students.” JOURNAL OF ADVERTISING RESEARCH-NEW YORK-43.3 (2003): 268-280.

Hinds, J., & Sparks, P. (2008). Engaging with the natural environment: The role of affective connection and identity. Journal of Environmental Psychology, 28(2),109-120.

Kerstetter, D., & Cho, M. H. (2004). Prior knowledge, credibility and information search. Annals of Tourism Research, 31(4), 961-985.

Nchise, A. C. (2012, June). The trend of e-democracy research: summary evidence and implications. In Proceedings of the 13th Annual International Conference on Digital Government Research (pp. 165-172). ACM.

Vanderford, H. A. (1996). What’s in a Name-Heritage or Hatred: The School Mascot Controversy. JL & Educ., 25, 381.

[loboslovebees]

Lobos Love Bees: Introduction

The University of New Mexico is a leader in its community for sustainable efforts, such as solar panels, LEED certified buildings, and their own personalized recycling program. The next step UNM needs to take in the sustainable department is to become a pesticide-free campus. The UNM Campus is not a pollinator friendly campus, as there are not very many pollinator friendly plants throughout campus and there is large pesticide use, about 31 different types of pesticides and herbicides according to the Physical Plant Department of UNM. The bee population is declining due to pesticides (Henry, 2012), resulting in colony collapse disorder (Suryanarayanan & Kleinman, 2013). This large amount of pesticide use is also not healthy for the students, staff, or visitors (Alavanja et al, 2004), and very few of these people are aware of the pesticide use or their harmful effects (Hernández, 2013).  This step would not only benefit the students and staff, but also the health of the honey bee population on campus, as they are both dangerous to both populations (Alavanja et al, 2004). It is very important that we promote the lives of the honey bees (Brown et al, 2009), so it is imperative that we create a bee-friendly campus by stopping the use of pesticides. To do so, the students and staff need to be educated on the facts about pesticides and also the benefits of honeybees and pollinators.

There is a large fear that surrounds honey bees in the public environment, but only 5-30% of the population is allergic to bees (Münstedt & Mühlhans, 2013), so honeybees cause a real threat to only a small portion of the population. If students knew that being allergic may be the only real threat of honeybees, and that most of the students are not, it is likely the amount of fear surrounding honey bees would lower. In addition, if students knew the threats that pesticides pose they would understand that the benefits of a pesticide-free campus outweigh the minor threat of honeybees. If this information was better known on campus, then the knowledge should result in a rise in support for a pesticide-free campus. Support from students and staff will be very important to persuade administration to get rid of pesticides on campus.

Our group brought awareness and education about these facts to students and staff at the UNM Grower’s Market and Sustainability Expo on April 23rd, 2014, so we could receive signatures on a petition to create a pesticide free campus. This petition was created by the Sustainability Program’s Sustainability 434 class to be presented to the UNM Plant Department to persuade UNM to become a pesticide free campus. We had the support of The Sustainability Program at UNM and Jessica Rowland, the teacher of the Grower’s Market class at UNM; they were able to ensure our spot at the expo for our booth. We also had the support of a local beekeeper who let us borrow a top bar to exhibit at our booth. With the support of all these great people and programs we were able to reach a very large audience at the expo. We talked to people about the harmful effects of pesticides (Flenniken, 2014, Hernández, 2013), the destruction of honeybee colonies by colony collapse disorder (Henry, 2012, Suryanarayanan & Kleinman, 2013), the foods we depend on honeybees for (Morse & Calderone, 2000), and the amount of pesticides that are used on campus.

The booth we set up at the Sustainability Expo used shocking images to attract an audience (see Figure 1, Figure 2, Figure 3, Figure 3.1, Figure 3.2). We also set up a demonstration of about 10 different foods that we depended on honeybees for, which brought in a few more audience that may have not been interested at first. The booth we set up at the Sustainability Expo proved useful in educating students, staff, and visitors on pesticide’s effect on honey bee and human health on campus and in turn resulted in an abundance of signatures on the pesticide-free campus petition. Overall, the booth was very successful in creating knowledge, conversations, and 297 signatures for the pesticide-free campus petition.

Fig. 1 A list of pesticides and herbicides used on UNM campus: presented at the event booth at the Earth Day Sustainability Expo on April 22nd.

Fig 2. A list of honeybee-dependent crops and various facts on honeybees: presented at the event booth at the Earth Day Sustainability Expo on April 22nd.

Fig 3. Various facts about pesticides with graphics: presented at the event booth at the Earth Day Sustainability Expo on April 22nd.

Fig 3.1 Close-up of the graphic used in figure 3: presented at the event booth at the Earth Day Sustainability Expo on April 22nd.

Fig 3.2 Close-up of the graphic used in figure 3: presented at the event booth at the Earth Day Sustainability Expo on April 22nd.

Works Cited:

Alavanja, M. C., Hoppin, J. A., & Kamel, F. (2004). Health Effects of Chronic Pesticide

Exposure: Cancer and Neurotoxicity* 3. Annu. Rev. Public Health, 25, 155-197.

Brown, M. J., & Paxton, R. J. (2009). The conservation of bees: a global perspective. Apidologie, 40(3), 410-416.

Flenniken, M. L. (2014). Honey Bee-Infecting Plant Virus with Implications on HoneyBee Colony Health. mBio, 5(2), e00877-14.

Henry, M., Beguin, M., Requier, F., Rollin, O., Odoux, J. F., Aupinel, P., … & Decourtye, A. (2012). A common pesticide decreases foraging success and survival in honey bees. Science, 336(6079), 348-350.

Hernández, A. F., Parrón, T., Tsatsakis, A. M., Requena, M., Alarcón, R., & López-

Guarnido, O. (2013). Toxic effects of pesticide mixtures at a molecular level: their relevance to human health. Toxicology, 307, 136-145.

Morse, R. A., & Calderone, N. W. (2000). The value of honey bees as pollinators of UScrops in 2000. Bee culture, 128(3), 1-15.

Münstedt, K., & Mühlhans, A. K. (2013). Fears, Phobias and Disgust Related to Bees andother Arthropods.

Suryanarayanan, S., & Kleinman, D. L. (2013). Be (e) coming experts: The controversy over insecticides in the honey bee colony collapse disorder. Social Studies of Science, 43(2), 215-240.