Students organize 2,017-letter-writing campaign in response to Trump inauguration

Donald Trump becomes America’s president today — and for some UNC students, he’s about to become a pen pal.

“Starting pretty soon after the election, myself and a few other people around campus started meeting to figure out some kind of a student-led response to Donald Trump,” senior Brady Blackburn said. “We had an environmental club meeting last semester to try and figure out what to do.”

Blackburn, who is the president of Students Working for Environmental Action and Transformation, said his goal was to collect 2,017 letters to mail to political representatives.

Today from 8 a.m. to 8 p.m., Blackburn and other environmental leaders on campus will be in the Aquarium Lounge in the Student Union helping students write and mail letters.

“A big part of the reason is the symbol that it can create,” he said. “Having some sort of physical way to share your voice on Inauguration Day – that’s why we’re doing this.”

Blackburn said students are encouraged to express their opinions on any topics, but their group’s focus is on the environment.

Chairperson of the UNC Environmental Affairs Committee Morgan Zemaitis said she feels the same way.

“I talked with Brady about recent developments in the federal government and how that puts the environment at risk in ways that we haven’t seen before,” she said. “We just wanted to find a way to get people involved who weren’t normally involved in these things.”

Zemaitis said the students hosting the event will supply letter templates for students regarding the environment, but also encourage them to write freely.

“We don’t want to tell people where they should write if they already have an idea, but if they don’t we’ll provide the information for them,” she said.

Blackburn said the letters aren’t just being sent to Donald Trump, but to other members of government as well as whomever students decide they would like to write to.

“We want to branch beyond the White House and write letters to people like Thom Tillis and Richard Burr,” he said.

Allie Omens, president of Defend Our Future UNC, said she is going to the event and hopes the letter campaign can help reach some of the people in power.

“I don’t know how much attention environmental issues will get no matter what anyone says, but focusing on the smaller levels, like state and local government, can really get people to act,” she said.

Blackburn said he hopes the event will be a community experience for students and will help them feel like they have a voice.

“If 2,017 people write a letter, you can be sure somebody’s going to hear that,” he said.

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